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PROWLING ABOUT 
PANAMA 



BY 



GEORGE A. MILLER 



Illustrated bt 
ALICE AND A. W. BEST 

From Photographs by the Author 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1919, by 
GEORGE A. MILLER 



/<?-/d3/3 



©CI.A525876 

JUN 14 1319 



^\«.t) I 



DEDICATED 

TO THE 

YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE EPWORTH LEAGUES 

OF THE 

CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB " PAGE 

Foreword 11 

I. Where the Prowling is Good 13 

II. The Trail of the Pirates 26 

III. Picturesque Panama 41 

IV. A City of Ghosts 55 

V. The Spell of the Jungle 65 

VI. Life at the Bottom 76 

VII. The Interior 93 

VIII. Economic Waste 109 

IX. Panama and Progress 122 

X. Knowing Our Neighbors 144 

XI. The Fam ly Tree 160 

XII. Latin-American Heart 178 

XIII. The Caribbean World 193 

XIV. The Panama Canal. 214 

XV. Prowling into the Future 235 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Faithful Mule is the Ship of the Jungle 14 

The Homeward Way at Nightfall 15 

An Empire in the Making 19 

A Few Good Roads on the Zone 21 

Church at Nata, Oldest Inhabited Town in New World, 

Founded 1520 24 

The Jungle is the Place for Picnics 27 

Even Farm Cabins Are Picturesque in Costa Rica 30 

Ruins of Old Panama, the Most Romantic Spot in the New 

World 33 

Indian Woman at the Fountain 36 

Baths — Wholesale and Retail 43 

Convent Door 46 

Official Lottery in Bishop's House, Panama 48 

Ruin of Famous Flat- Arch Church 52 

Eighth-Grade Room, Panama 53 

Convent Garden 56 

Romantic Old Convents Survive 58 

Ruined Tower at Old Panama 60 

Costa Rica Trapiche, or Sugar Mill 62 

Papaya Trees 66 

Bananas and Sugar Cane 68 

Cacao Pods 70 

Proposed Location for Rest Cure 73 

Picturesque Jungle Towns 78 

Tortillas are Staple 80 

Jungle Folk 81 

"The Cotter's Saturday Night" 82 

Church Bells of Arraijan, Cast 1722 85 

First-Grade Room, Panama 89 

The Beautiful Savanas of Costa Rica 95 

Shipping Costa Rica Vegetables to Panama 99 

Good Pineapples Grow Here 103 

Dead Timber in Gatun Lake Now Covered with Orchids 105 

Interior Meat Market . Ill 

The Flavor of Old Spain 112 

Taking the Rest Cure 113 

The Oxen Stage of Agriculture 115 



10 ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Wayside Sellers of Fruit 117 

The House Beside the Road 118 

Wireless at Darien 123 

Farm Grist Mill, Costa Rica 126 

Happy Kindergartners, Panama 129 

Young Costa Rica is Enterprising 131 

Wooden Sugar Mill and Its Maker 133 

Public Market, David 137 

Indian Boy Goes to School 145 

Washday in Costa Rica 147 

Riverside Plantation 151 

Jungle Products 154 

San Bias Indian Chief 161 

No Race Suicide Here 162 

Jungle Guide 164 

One Use for a Head 165 

Beggars and Cathedrals 167 

Far from the Madding Crowd 169 

Seawall Church and School, Panama 171 

Mandy Did Her Share 173 

The Canal Digger 173 

The Town Pump, Interior Village 175 

Wayside Cemetery in the Jungle . . . . : 176 

Coconuts — So Good and So High 180 

Boiling "Dulce"— Crude Sugar ,_ 183 

Washing by the River ". 189 

Costa Rica Farm House 194 

Bananas Thirty Feet High 197 

San Bias Indians Have "Poker Faces" 198 

Where Styles Molest No More 201 

Chinese Always Start a School 205 

"Schooldays" 205 

Three in a Row 212 

Mother, Home, and — the Simple Life 212 

Construction Days in Culebra-Gailard Cut 217 

Gatun Spillway, Key to the Canal 224 

Cristobal Streets 227 

Fat Cattle of Code ..228 

Enchanted Islands in Gatun Lake 231 

Panama Public Water Works, Interior Country 237 

A Jungle Cathedral 242 

Shoe-bills Are Small 248 



FOREWORD 

The fine art of prowling may be achieved, but 
is more often a gift of those to the manner born. 
Professional globe-trotters are not prowlers. 
They are often the victims of their own sense of 
superiority. Personally conducted tours are 
little help to real prowling, and professional 
guides reduce the sight-seer to a machine for 
receiving "canned" information with gaping 
mouth, while with his free hand he extracts tips 
from his reluctant pocket. 

Prowhng is an instinct, a sixth sense of loca- 
tions and values. The prowler must have intui- 
tion and imagination and perseverance and his- 
torical perspective, hi ' with these he must have 
something else — ^that inner vision that finds 
values in everything human. The expert ex- 
plorer will find something interesting in Sahara, 
but almost any prowler will have a rare time in 
Panama. 

Probably no spot in the New World has served 
as the location of so many kinds of events and in- 
terests as this narrow neck of land between two 
continents. Brief histories of it have been well 
written, and the visitor should by all means read 
at least one of them. It remains for some seer 
yet to tell worthily the story of the four centuries 

11 



12 FOREWORD 

that link the last discovery of the world's greatest 
explorer with the final achievement of the world's 
most skillful builders. 

Panama furnishes an epitome of history. 
Nearly everything that has ever happened any- 
where in the world has had some counterpart or 
parallel in Panama, and of the coming results of 
the new forces now released on the Isthmus time 
alone can be the measure. 

This book makes no claims to consistency. 
Where contradictory characteristics abound and 
motives are much mixed, both sides may be faith- 
fully set forth, but to reconcile them is a difficult 
matter. There will be no unified and consistent 
life on the Isthmus until the advancing civiliza- 
tion now there outgrows some of its present traits. 

Can one tell the truth about Panama and re- 
turn to the Isthmus ? That remains to be proven. 
Much depends on the spirit of the prowler. As 
well ask whether one can tell the truth about Chi- 
cago and be welcome to that metropoHs. Prob- 
ably Chicago would pay no attention to the com- 
ment, but Panama might take enough interest to 
notice. 

This is not a guidebook. Heaven forbid ! It is 
merely a few notes of a prowler who found 
Panama interesting. 



CHAPTER I 
WHERE THE PROWLING IS GOOD 

Panama is the great American curiosity shop. 
The first city founded by explorers in the New 
World, the oldest town in America inhabited by 
white men, the most conglomerate mixture of 
humanity on earth are in Panama. The bloodiest 
tale of modern history, the most romantic story 
of American exploration, the greatest engineer- 
ing achievement of man all center in Panama. 

If there be any interest in congested and swel- 
tering humanity, any concern for the problems of 
social uphft and personal reaction, Panama is the 
laboratory for study. ^The cleanest and healthi- 
est towns on earth are on the Canal Zone, and the 
last word in shiftlessness and inefficiency is also 
here. Superstition and science, rascality and 
rhapsody, efficiency and squalor, graft and honor, 
all mixed and mingled — ^this is Panama. Jungle 
and plain, valley and coast, tropic heat and moun- 
tain paradise, fever-swamps and ideal sanitation, 
engineering success and life in the primitive open 
— ^these too are in Panama, 

Strange and mysterious traces are still found 
of the days when the gold of Peru was carried 
across the Isthmus on pack trains. Later the 

13 



14 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

gold-seekers of California fought their way along 
the route of the present Canal and found ships 
on the west coast for the mines of Eldorado. If 
any survivors still live, they can tell stirring tales 




THE FAITHFUL MULE IS THE SHIP OF THE JUNGLE 



of the days when it was well worth a life to carry 
gold to Aspinwall. 

It all began with Columbus himself when he 
sailed into Almirante Bay and thought that he 
had found in Chiriqui Lagoon the long-sought 
passage to India. What he really found, what 
was to follow his discovery, he could not have 
dreamed, adventurer that he was! Almirante 



WHERE PROWLING IS GOOD 15 



(Admiral), Cristobal (Christopher), and Colon 
(Columbus) remain to-day to remind us of the 
illustrious explorer who first set foot on Panama. 
But Columbus gave us Panama, and never knew! 
It was Balboa who first saw 
the waters of the wide Pa- 
cific from the summits of the 
Isthmian hills. It was 
Pizarro who packed across 
the fifty miles of jungle the 
timbers of the ships which 
he put together on the beach 
of the Pacific and with 
which he discovered Peru, 
after indescribable hard- 
ships and repeated attempts 
to find the "hill of gold." 

On the Pacific side of the 
Isthmus was founded Old 
Panama, the first city of the 
New World, where to-day 
majestic ruins stand, a fit- 
ting shrine for the reverent 
pilgrim. And between Old 
Panama and Porto Bello 
stretches the famous Paved Trail of Las Cruces. 

Along this trail lurked the trouble-hunters and 
makers of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies. For two hundred years the tinkle of the 
bells of the gold-laden pack mules was never 




THE HOMEWARD WAY AT 
NIGHTFALL 



16 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

silent. On this jungle path, when stolen gold was 
carried by the sackful, trouble was certain to fol- 
low. The big trail was a pathway of blood, rob- 
bery, and intrigue. All the worst passions and 
performances of depraved men turned loose and 
ran riot for a century and a half. These were the 
days when Hf e was raw and rough at Panama. 

To-day the old trail is covered with palms and 
decorated with orchids. Occasional stones trace 
the outline of the ancient highway. Where the 
drunken and ribald song of the muleteer rose 
about the camp-fire at night, canaries and par- 
rakeets now chatter and sing. The soft caress 
of the jungle breeze whispers no tales of the days 
when the trail could be traced by the bleaching 
bones that lined the right-of-way. The jungle is 
nature's great blotter for the sins, sorrows, and 
sufferings of an age now forgotten — but it all 
happened in Panama. 

Panama is not all jungle. To the westward 
stretch great savannas, between the mountains 
and the sea; miles and miles of smooth and level 
country open, fair and well watered, only waiting 
for the tickle of American cultivation to laugh a 
crop. It makes a real estate man's fingers itch; 
but that is another story. Where a little cultiva- 
tion has been inadvertently perpetrated on the 
land, tall sugar cane, luscious fruits, and tooth- 
some vegetables attest the quality of the soil and 
the climate. 



WHERE PROWLING IS GOOD 17 

Frequent rivers, numerous inlets on the coast 
line, occasional interesting native towns, old 
churches, impossible "roads," meandering trails, 
scattered herds of fat cattle, a few sugar mills, 
numerous trapiches (cane grinders), fenced pa- 
treros (pastures), and everywhere the mixed- 
blood natives — this is Panama in the western 
provinces. 

Panama westward is not all a flat country, how- 
ever. Eleven thousand feet into the sky rises the 
Chiriqui volcano, and a httle farther west in the 
same range stands Pico Blanco (White Top), at 
about the same height. Thrown across the slopes 
of these lofty summits and half way up lies a 
great and beautiful country, with a climate such 
as might have been coveted for the site of Eden. 
Cool, comfortable, and salubrious is this garden 
of the gods. In all the so-called temperate zone 
no land yet discovered offers three hundred and 
fifty days per year of comfort and health. To be 
sure, vacation pilgrims from the warmer coast 
country sometimes make mention of cold feet 
upon first reaching this Mecca in the mountains, 
but nobody finds fault on that accoimt. Most of 
them like it. 

Chiriqui is a garden spot. Wide ranges of 
fertile soil, gentle slopes rolHng back against the 
mountain ranges, good harbors along the coast, 
and occasional plantations with American im- 
provements, mark the country as the coming 



18 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

granary of the Republic. Rolling slopes and 
blossoming fields, with a background of the 
never-faihng come-and-go of the Ughts and 
shades on the face of the mountains, form a pic- 
ture not to be forgotten. Always the summits 
and the clouds seem to be playing leapfrog in the 
sky, and the whole upper world, looking down on 
the puny traveler, seems ever trying to say some- 
thing and never quite uttering its meaning. And 
he who looks and listens finds himself trying to 
say it for them, and never can he find the word. 
Perhaps some poetic soul will yet look upon these 
heights and tell us what it is they are muttering. 

The coast line of western Panama is a fascinat- 
ing shore. Like enchanted islands rise bits of 
forest out of the sea and any of them might be the 
castle site of the lord of the main. 

In and out between their wooded shores the 
steamer winds its way till it dodges in through 
some narrow "boca" to find a tortuous channel 
leading to a landing place, that must always be 
approached at the whim of the tide. Whether 
there be a thousand islands or not, no one knows ; 
but I have stood on the steamer deck and counted 
fifty in sight at a time, while other fifties rose up 
to meet us as those nearby dropped astern. Here 
and there some lonely hght blinks its vigil 
through the night, and the swells of the Pacific 
break in fantastic sea-ghosts against the rocky 
cliffs. 



WHERE PROWLING IS GOOD 19 

Navigation of these waters is not a science, 
it is an art. The captains of these coast craft 
know every tree and rock and river mouth for 
four hundred miles, and make their way through 
tortuous channels by markings that no landsman 
can see. There is one grizzled navigator, said to 
be unable to read or write, who knows every 
marking on the coast for six hundred miles, and 




AN EMPIRE IN THE MAKING 



in the long years of service has never made a mis- 
take or met with an accident. Possibly his suc- 
cess might be due to the fact that what he does not 
know does not confuse him. His mental horizon 
may not be very distant, but at least he escapes 
a lot of worry about things that he (and you and 
I) cannot control. When the tides have a rise 
and fall of eighteen feet, and all harbors are but 
shallow river mouths, the negotiation of the coast 



20 PROWLING AEOUT PANAMA 

ports becomes a matter requiring much accm'acy 
of judgment. 

The old trail across the Isthmus is the Mecca 
of many pilgrims who by some searching find its 
scattered stones amid the riotous jungle. The 
later trail was opened after the city of Panama 
was moved to its present site. It began at Colon, 
followed the Chagres River to the present site of 
Gamboa, and then wound its ways over the low 
summit of the hills down to the new Panama and 
terminated at the "Nun's Beach," where now 
stand a Protestant church and school. Here the 
pack trains were unloaded and the high tides car- 
ried the rafts and lighters out to the ships waiting 
in the little harbor. 

The dark days of Panama were the days after 
the gold trade failed. Even the gold of Peru was 
not inexhaustible, and the trade across the 
Isthmus could not stand continued centuries of 
robbery and murder. It had to end some time, 
and end it did; and when the end came all the 
Isthmus lapsed into a slough of despond and leth- 
argy of inertia. For a century and a half 
Panama was as forgotten as the Catacombs. 

Rut Panama went her way, whether anybody 
cared or not. The people left on the Isthmus 
were the racial remnants of the mixture of man- 
kind that had found its way back and forth for 
two centuries, and they were fairly able to take 
care of themselves. The rich forests and fertile 



WHERE PROWLING IS GOOD 21 

soil would bear fruit and food enough to sustain 
life whether anyone worked or not, and the result 
was not the development of a virile race of men. 
How could it be? Probably few spots on earth 
have had less incentive to develop hardy and en- 
terprising character than the Isthmus of Panama. 
The prowler about Panama will find a wide 




A FEW GOOD ROADS ON THE ZONE 



variety of interests and inspirations. Whatever 
his peculiar, personal fad he can find it some- 
where. Then he can prowl to his heart's content. 
If he prefers the sea, there are fifteen hundred 
miles of coast line to explore with something new 
to every mile. Or he can launch out a bit, and in 
a day's time make his way to the famous Pearl 
Islands, where are life and industry so distinct 
that weeks mays be spent in studying the develop- 



22 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

ment of a civilization, insular and unique. The 
coast of Darien has boundless possibilities for the 
explorer; and the San Bias Islands would keep 
the ethnologist busy for months. For an en- 
chanted inland sea the Chiriqui Lagoon is unsur- 
passed. 

If historical romance is desired, the prowling 
is certainly abundant; and if the prowler is a 
lover of nature, wild and luxuriant, rioting in 
marvelous and indescribable forms of overflowing 
life, he has but to equip himself for jungle travel, 
and he will find wonders by the mile, and fan- 
tastic nature piled mountains high and chasms 
deep. If it is mountains, they are here in scenic 
beauty unsurpassed. If the explorer is a student 
of human nature and cares to attempt the un- 
scrambling of this blend of blood that flows in 
swarthy faces, he will be busy here for a lifetime. 
And if none of these will do, and the curious 
landsman will have nothing short of the exploring 
of vast unchristened wildernesses where no hu- 
man foot has ever trod, and where strange and 
dangerous forms of unclassified life wander at 
will through the overgrown forests, he will find 
it — and doubtless he will find much more of it 
than he wants before he gets back to civiliza- 
tion. 

If it is promotion schemes and development 
projects, then here at least is a commodious place 
to put tbeni. Here, in agricultiiral ^nd colonize- 



WHERE PROWLING IS GOOD 23 

ing schemes, somebody will yet get rich — and 
other somebodies poor. 

If the prowler's interest is primarily social, and 
he would browse about one of the most interesting 
cities in America, let him come to Panama. 
Ancient Spanish streets, scrupulously clean — 
can these be found anywhere else? Side by side, 
over and under, the sixteenth and twentieth cen- 
turies run together. 

And what makes Panama to-day the crossroad 
of the world? For him who in the love of engi- 
neering skill holds communion with high human 
achievement, and prefers to prowl around the 
locks and docks, and study the marvelous suc- 
cesses and adaptations and devices of the latest 
and greatest feat of brain and hand, this is the 
very center of the earth. No man with a soul for 
the poetry of mechanics can stand in a control 
house of one of the locks and see the enormous 
gates swing back at the movement of a finger 
without feeling that man, with all his limitations, 
has yet in his being some image of the Creator. 
To see an ocean giant rise up slowly in the teeth 
of gravitation and slip through the gates on to the 
higher level, is to wonder whether the portals that 
look so gloomy to us may not, after all, be not 
exits but entrances to a new and higher level of 
life. What a text! The ship does not rise by 
straining but by resting in a narrow place. And 
no ship evqr yet got through the locks withoi:|t a 



24 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

pilot. The whole process is as silent as the forces 
of eternity. There is a lot more, and it bears no 
copyright. Help yourself. 

And for the prowler in the region of philos- 
ophy, what a place ! What changes in the geog- 
raphy and commerce and industry and policies 
and politics of mankind must follow this last 




CHURCH AT NATA, OLDEST INHABITED TOWN IN THE NEW 
WORLD, FOUNDED 1520 



achievement on the historical Isthmus of Panama, 
"quien sabe?" ("who knows?") None but the 
Omniscient. Trade routes and bank exchanges, 
commercial dealings and national programs will 
all be affected by this three-hundred-foot wide 
highway of water. If but some power the gift 
would give us to come back a century hence and 
see what will be doing then ! 

What social and moral transformations will be 



WHERE PROWLIISTG IS GOOD 25 

wrought in the coming years by the release of 
spiritual forces through the new religious life and 
free faith brought to Panama with the coming of 
the Canal? Out of the soul-bondage of a sys- 
tem of superstition and ignorance will come a new 
human consciousness of the worthiness of life and 
the high privilege of Hving. Whether it is to 
prowl or prophesy, the material is abundant, and 
the pilgrim will find rare material a-plenty all 
about him. Panama is perplexing and peculiar, 
but he who finds the key to the riddle will be kept 
busy. 

Perhaps the amateur explorer has a pen- 
chant for old churches. Here they are. Seven 
of them, with a couple of first-class ruins thrown 
in. The rich monasteries of Peru and Mexico are 
missing, but for that there is a reason. Every 
bit of treasure was stolen as fast as accumulated. 
Yes, if unmolested in the past, Panama would be 
a mine for the antiquarian to-day. But any ac- 
tive imagination, even on half-time shift, can find 
here material for romances, warranted to interest 
every member of the family, at reduced prices, if 
paid for in advance. From the Flat-Arch 
Church to the ruins of Old Panama it is good 
prowhng all the way. 



CHAPTER II 
THE TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 

The present conglomerate of humanity living 
on the Isthmus of Panama is the racial remainder 
of some very much mixed social history. Here 
were enacted some of the most stirring stories and 
tempestuous times in American history. In 1453 
the Eastern Roman Empire fell before the as- 
saults of the Turks and closed the land routes to 
India. Nearly forty years later Columbus set 
sail in his great effort to find a westward pas- 
sage for the commerce of Europe. In this he 
failed, but on his fourth and final voyage discov- 
ered the Isthmus of Panama and landed on the 
shores of the Chiriqui Lagoon, supposing that 
the beautiful inland sea must be the long-sought 
passage westward. Here the town of Almirante 
still bears his name. At Porto Bello and Saint 
Christopher Bay he made brief stops and re- 
turned to Spain having no idea of the character 
of the isthmus that he had discovered. 

On November 3, 1903, exactly four hundred 
years from the day that Columbus set foot on the 
soil of Panama, the Republic of Panama declared 
its sovereign independence and began its national 
life as one of the family of American nations, 

?0 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 



27 



In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the 
Caribbean main was overrun by as unscrupulous 
and bloodthirsty a set of pirates as ever sailed 
any sea. Even with- 
out these rascals 
there would have 
been trouble enough, 
and with them the 
story is sufficiently 
lurid for the most 
melodramatic taste. 

One name stands 
out above his fellows. 
The intrepid navi- 
gator who first saw 
the waters of the 
Pacific set forth at 
the age of twenty- 
three as an adven- 
turer, and after vari- 
ous experiences em- 
barked as a stowa- 
way for his second 
voyage. By per- 
sonal persuasion he 
became the partner 

of his master, and after founding a colony in 
Darien sent Senor Endico back to Spain in irons 
for his pains. 

This left Balboa supreme, with the whole 




THE JUNGLE IS THE PLACE FOR 
PICNICS 



28 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Castilla de Oro (Castle of Gold) country before 
him for exploration. He at once sent Pizarro to 
examine the interior and gathered the scattered 
fugitives from former expeditions. The com- 
bined forces took the field against the Indians. 
When they reached the domain of Comagre, the 
most powerful chief of the country, peace was 
made. This chief was a real aristocrat with mmn- 
mied ancestors clothed in gold and pearls, and he 
gave to Balboa four thousand ounces of gold, 
sixty wives, and offered to show him the way to 
a country beyond the dim mountains where a 
powerful people lived in magnificence and sailed 
ships of solid gold. He also entertained his dis- 
tinguished visitor with tales of a temple of gold 
called Dabaibe, forty leagues farther than 
Darien, and said that the mother of the sun, 
moon, and stars lived there. 

Balboa's imagination was stirred by these 
stories and he prepared an expedition of discov- 
ery. No temple of gold was found, but internal 
dissensions and Indian attacks disturbed the 
peace of the colony. Reenforcements arrived, 
and with them the title of captain-general. 

Balboa now set out on what was to be the most 
famous event of his life. He had been promised 
the sight of a great ocean to the south, after he 
had climbed certain mountains. Various Indian 
oppositions developed, but on the 26th of Sep- 
tember, 1513, at about ten o'clock in the morning, 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 29 

Balboa and his men, from the top of a high moun- 
tain, saw for the first time the waters of the vast 
Pacific. The priest of the expedition, named 
Andreas de Vara, chanted a Te JDeum, with the 
entire company on their knees. A cross was 
raised, and the names of the Spanish rulers 
carved on the surrounding trees. 

After meeting several Indian tribes the de- 
scent was made to the shore, and Balboa waded 
knee deep into the surf and, waving the banner 
of Spain, proclaimed that the new-found ocean 
and all land bordering thereon should be the 
property of his sovereign. 

For a long time this new ocean was known as 
the South Sea, and Balboa at once set about ex- 
ploring the vicinity. The Pearl Islands were lo- 
cated, taken possession of, and named. A later 
expedition by a less difficult route crossed the 
Isthmus of Panama and conquered the Indians 
on the Pearl Islands, bringing back plentiful 
tribute of fine pearls from the subdued chief. 

The year following, in 1514, arrived the black 
villain of the story in the person of Pedrarias, 
sent out from Spain as governor of Darien. This 
disturber brought with him two thousand men. 
Balboa built a fleet of ships on the Atlantic side, 
took them to pieces, carried them on the backs of 
Indians across the Isthmus, put them together 
again, launched them in the waters of the Pacific, 
and proceeded to explore the coast eastward from 



30 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Panama. On his return from this trip Balboa 
was arrested by Pedrarias on a trumped-up 
charge of treason, and in the forty-second year of 
his Hfe was beheaded, while declaring his entire 
innocency of all treachery. Balboa was a prod- 
uct of his age, and of faults he possessed 
a-plenty, but as one of the great explorers of his- 
tory his end was a sad reward for the distin- 
guished services that he rendered to the world. 
In 1515 an expedition crossed the Isthmus and 




EVEN FARM CABINS ARE PICTURESQUE IN COSTA RICA 



camped near the hut of a poor fisherman at a 
point called by the natives Panama. For this 
name several explanations are given, one of them 
being that there were many shellfish at this place. 
The meaning of the name is now lost, but in 1519 
the city of Panama was founded at this point by 
Pedrarias. Two years later, by order of the 
Spanish crown, the bishopric, government, and 
colonists of the Isthmus were transferred from 
the Atlantic side at Darien to Old Panama. 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 81 

History now began in earnest by the Pacific. 
In 1525 a priest celebrated in the cathedral at Old 
Panama solemn mass with two other men, 
Pizzarro and Almagro, the rite being a solemn 
vow to conquer all countries lying to the south. 
For this purpose an expedition was soon organ- 
ized and sailed away along the west coast of 
South America. This expedition met with vary- 
ing fortunes, but in time discovered the long- 
sought Peru with its splendid temples and golden 
treasures. 

The first regular trail across the Isthmus led 
from Nombre de Dios to Old Panama, crossing 
the Chagres River at Cruces. Later small boats 
sailed from Nombre de Dios to the mouth of the 
Chagres and made their way up to Cruces, where 
their cargoes were transferred to the backs of 
horses for the rest of the journey to Panama. 
Later Nombre de Dios was abandoned for Porto 
Bello, because of the very good harbor at the 
latter place. The old trail was "paved" with 
stones for a part of the way, and the relics of this 
old road may still be found in a few places amid 
the tangled growths of the jungle. 

With the conquest of Peru and the discov- 
ery of gold in Darien, Old Panama came rapidly 
to its own and soon became a city of great im- 
portance, being for the time the richest city in 
New Spain. All the gold of Peru and the rich 
west coast was brought to Panama to be sorted 



32 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

and packed across the Isthmus, thence to be sent 
to Spain. Porto Bello became a rich town and 
maintained great annual fairs up to the time of 
its destruction by Morgan's pirates. 

The century and a half between the establish- 
ment of Old Panama as the chief city of the 
Isthmus and its destruction in 1671 supplied one 
of the tempestuous periods of history. It was on 
the Isthmus of Panama that the American slave 
trade began and was continued for three hundred 
years. The native Indians were so destroyed by 
the brutality and greed of the Spanish conquerors 
that the expedient of importing black men from 
Africa was devised in order to secure a labor sup- 
ply for the country. Here arises the historical 
precedent for the use of West Indian labor in the 
digging of the American Canal. 

The best account of the sacking and destruc- 
tion of Old Panama is that written by John Es- 
quemeling and published seven years after the 
event, of which he was an eyewitness, being a 
member of the pirates' band. The detailed ac- 
count of this event, with the general pillaging of 
the Isthmus by the English buccaneers, has been 
narrated with much exactness and great interest. 

Stories of the great wealth of Old Panama in 
the day of its glory are not hard to find. With 
the complete destruction of all this magnificence, 
the present city was founded with due ceremonies 
in 1673 and much stone was transported from the 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 



33 



old city and built into the new. The cathedral 
was soon built and stands to-day as solid as when 
first erected. The queen of Spain sent detailed 
instructions for the building of the city, and 
among other things directed that a safe wall for 
defense should be provided. This was so well 
done that some of it still stands, an interesting 
relic of the vigor and thoroughness of the civil- 
ization that produced it. Many years passed in 
building these walls, and they were said to have 
cost ten millions of dollars, most of which came 
from Peru. The story is told of a 
Spanish king, who stood one day 
looking out of his palace window. 
When asked what he was looking 
for he replied, "I 
am looking for 




RUINS OF OLD PANAMA. THE MOST ROMANTIC SPOT IN 
THE NEW WORLD 



34 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

those costly walls of Panama ; they should be vis- 
ible even from here." A little knowledge of the 
business methods of those days may throw some 
light on the whys and wherefores of the high cost 
of the old walls. 

Twenty-six years after the founding of the 
present city of Panama an effort was made to 
establish an English colony in Darien, but fever 
and discouragement aided the Spanish in ending 
the venture. 

The eighteenth century is a monotonous one in 
Panama annals, marked mainly by frequent en- 
counters between the Spaniards and the Indians. 
Several piratical expeditions ended in the scatter- 
ing and murdering of the pirates and restoration 
of Spanish sovereignty. 

When the great movement in South America 
for pohtical independence swept as far north as 
Colombia, and the decisive battle of Boyaca was 
fought in 1819, Panama was very strongly held 
by Spain as a place of maintenance for her 
armies, and the city was at all times in a good 
state of defense. In this same year, however, the 
first junta was formed for the purpose of bring- 
ing about independence from Spain, and senti- 
ment in favor of the revolution grew very rapidly. 
Early in 1821 General Murgeon arrived with 
the promise of high reward if he could compose 
the difficulties in Panama and save the Isthmus to 
Spain. This he saw to be impossible, and after 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES S5 

having appointed Jose de Fabrega as coloner, 
he left for Quito. Fabrega, being Isthmian born, 
east his lot with the revolutionists and on Novem- 
ber 28th, 1821, a large and enthusiastic crowd 
assembled with representatives from all miHtary 
and ecclesiastical organizations, and Panama was 
declared to be forever free from Spanish domin- 
ion. A few loyal troops, seeing their helpless 
position, laid down their arms, and the change of 
government was effected without the shedding of 
a drop of blood — something new in Panamanian 
affairs. Simon Bolivar sent over help for the 
independents, but found the work done before his 
men arrived. 

After this pohtical upheaval Panama slept on, 
and would still be dormant to-day but for the dis- 
covery of gold in California in 1849. With a 
six months' overland journey between the gold- 
hungry men of the Eastern States and the gold- 
filled mountains of the West, the Isthmus sud- 
denly came into prominence as an easier way of 
reaching California. For seven or eight years 
after the finding of gold not less than forty mil- 
lions of dollars of gold, twelve millions in silver, 
and twenty-five thousand passengers were trans- 
ported across the Isthmus annually. In 1853 the 
high- water mark was reached, when sixty-six mil- 
lions of dollars of gold were carried across to the 
Atlantic side and shipped to New York. 

This sudden development of the pack train 



36 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



business brought to the Isthmus a horde of Chil- 
eans, Peruvians, 
Indians, and 
mixed breeds, a- 
mong whom were 
_^^_ the inevitable 

-.ca- '^^^ "^' 



plunderers and 
spoilers. The trail 
was again marked 
by blood and 
^™ treachery. Many 
an unhappy pil- 
grim lost his 
riches, and not a 
few lost their lives 
on the way. At 
last the authorities 
were aroused to 
the necessity of 
making safe this 
highway suddenly 
become so impor- 
tant to the world. 

The year of the 
first gold rush saw 
the organization of 
the Panama Rail- 
road Company. In 1846 three American busi- 
ness men organized under the present name and 
secured a concession from New Granada for 




INDIAN WOMAN AT THE FOUNTAIN 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 37 

forty-nine years with such conditions that no ship 
canal could be constructed across the Isthmus 
without the' consent of the railroad company. 
When the name of New Granada was changed to 
that of Colombia, the time was extended to 
ninety-nine years. This concession in time came 
to be very valuable, and the French Canal Com- 
pany found it necessary to buy out the Panama 
Railroad in order to secure control of the exclu- 
sive right of way across the Isthmus. Later, 
when the United States acquired the control of 
the French possessions in Panama, the Panama 
Railroad became one of the most valuable assets 
on the list. By conditions of the concession, this 
road was bound to pay to Colombia the sum of 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year. 
After various transfers and deals this still holds 
in the form of the obligation of the Panama 
Canal to pay this sum annually to the Republic 
of Panama. 

The story of the early construction days of the 
Panama Railroad are as exciting as those of the 
Morgan Pirates, with a far better outcome. 
Labor troubles were many and bitter, and it be- 
came necessary to hold men in jail until they were 
willing to work. The attractions of the Cali- 
fornia gold fields were too much for the cupidity 
of men who saw daily pack trains loaded with 
gold from the Eldorado of the Northwest pass- 
ing their wretched hovels and taunting them with 



38 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

visions of easy riches. But the work proceeded, 
and after interminable troubles with the black 
swamp between Aspinwall (Colon) and Gatun, 
the road was finished as far as Gatun in the year 
1850. In 1855 the hne was finished to Panama 
and the romantic career of the most prosperous 
short railroad in the world was well under way. 

Charges for freight and passenger travel were 
enormous in the early days of the road. The fare 
was fifty cents per mile, with all baggage extra. 
Freight was carried across the Isthmus for 
twenty-five cents per pound, but so terrible were 
the old pack-train conditions that the travelers of 
that day were more than willing to pay such 
prices for the luxury of crossing the Isthmus by 
the railroad. 

At last the Colombian government took up the 
matter and the passenger rate was reduced. Ten 
cents per pound continued to be the freight 
charge for years. The road made vast profits, 
and by a combination of rates with the steamship 
companies maintained a monopoly of travel. A 
few years after the completion of the railroad the 
pack-train men and outlaws, deprived of their 
plunder by the road, became very active as brig- 
ands, and on one occasion perpetrated a riot that 
cost sixteen Americans their hves and brought 
the United States and Colombia to the verge of 
open rupture. 

As far back as 1515 a German named Schoner 



TRAIL OF THE PIRATES 39 

drew a map of the American continents with a 
clear line for a canal through the Isthmus. In 
1581 an actual survey was made for a canal, but 
nothing was done about it. In 1620 Diego de 
Mercado submitted a long report to Philip II, 
but the monarch turned it down, saying that since 
God had joined the continents together, it would 
be impious to try to separate them, and a death 
penalty was decreed for anyone so rash as to try 
to undo the works of God in this way. In 1827 
an engineer was sent by Simon BoHvar, president 
of the New Granada federation, and a report was 
made commending the project of a combined rail 
and water route. In 1838 a French company 
aroused so much enthusiasm in the canal project 
that an expert was sent by the French govern- 
ment to look the ground over. He reported that 
a sea-level canal could be dug without going 
deeper than thirty-seven feet, but the idea was 
again abandoned. Two American investigations 
were made in 1866 and 1875, and about this time 
much interest was aroused in the then new Nic- 
aragua project. 

The popularity of the Suez Canal, successfully 
completed in 1869, led directly to the DeLesseps 
organization of the Panama Canal Company. 
Agitation began in 1875 and in the year follow- 
ing a right of way was secured, but with the 
Panama Railroad concession standing in the way. 

The story of the work of the French Company, 



40 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

the New Canal Company, and the final comple- 
tion of the work by the United States govern- 
ment, is told elsewhere. 

Now that the trail of the sixteenth-century 
pirates has become the most famous inland water- 
way of the world, we can read with complacency 
the story of the wretched times during which the 
Isthmus was the scene of constant strife. Verily, 
Panama was not a very good place for sightsee- 
ing in those days. The prowlers of the infested 
jungles and blood-stained trails were not such as 
we would select as travehng companions to-day. 
If any modern prowler becomes despondent and 
is tempted to complain that the former days were 
better than these, let him read the story of Old 
Panama, and then consider conditions as they are 
on the Isthmus and the Zone to-day, and he will 
find food for reflection. 



CHAPTER III 
PICTURESQUE PANAMA 

A Panamanian cart loaded with English tea 
biscuit, drawn by an old American army mule, 
driven by a Hindoo wearing a turban, drove up 
in front of a Chinese shop. The Jamaican clerk, 
aided by the San Bias errand boy, came out to 
supervise the unloading. The mule wriggled 
about out of position, a Spanish policeman came 
along and everybody got out and "cussed" the 
mule. 

That is Panama, every day. Across the street 
is an Italian lace shop run by a Jew. Next door 
is a printery, operated by a Costa Rican. Just 
beyond is a French laundry conducted by a man 
from Switzerland, and on the next corner is a 
beautiful Chinese store where they sell everything 
from Japan. Cloisonne and lacquer and curious 
carvings, silks, embroideries, scientific instru- 
ments — ^they are all here. You can buy Canton 
linen, Hongkong brass, Nikko carvings, Hindoo 
embroidery, German cutlery, French micro- 
scopes, Canadian flour. New York apples, and 
California grapes all within a block. And the 
products of Central and South America are all 
about. 

41 



42 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

The street in front of the shops is full of Pan- 
amanians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Chileans, 
Colombians, and San Bias Indians, besides some 
representatives of every country of North and 
South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 
Canal Zone Americans walk past Yankee busi- 
ness men, and native police crowd the mestizos 
off the sidewalk. 

Panama is a jitney town, and the honk of the 
never-silent horn punctuates the clang and dash 
of the trolleys and automobiles down a fifteen- 
foot street in a mad race to see which can get 
through first. Overhanging roofs nearly touch 
above blooming orchids and talking birds that 
scream across the narrow streets. Gloomy in- 
teriors and stumbHng stairways lead up to spa- 
cious apartments and breezy balconies. Above 
are occasional roof -gar dens. All the rooms have 
high ceihngs, all the streets are paved, and all the 
kids wear clothes — sometimes. 

There is no possible human shade or tint that 
is absent here. The Anglo-Saxons are white, 
more or less. The Jamaicans are black, mostly. 
The Panamanian is most often a soft and pleasing 
brown, done in a number of wholly unmatchable 
tints. And the natives from these many sunny 
countries round about are of every known color- 
tone, from chrome yellow to Paris green. This 
is the human kaleidoscope of the earth: shake it 
up and you will get a different result every time. 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 43 

You may not like it, but you can never truth- 
fully say that Panama is not interesting — all the 
time. 

The streets are clean. Daily sweepers and 
nightly garbage men take care of that. The side- 
walks are narrow, of course. Perhaps these two- 
foot sidewalks account in part for the innate 
courtesy of the Latin 
mind. One must be 
either polite or profane 
when he makes his 
way along these little 
ledges, often two or 
three feet above the 
street. A portable 
stepladder would help 
some. 

Some of these houses cv^ 
are old, very old. A 
few are new; most of -*!i5^ 
them have stood here baths— wholesale and retail 
one or two hundred 

years. There are many three stories high, a few 
boast of four stories, but the most of them have 
but two. Third stories are popular because of the 
breezes that blow and make life comfortable. 

Plazas are small, but parked and well kept, 
and they are used as only Latin- Americans know 
how to use a plaza. The little ones are garden- 
spot oases in the deserts of bare walls and wide 




M PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

eaves. Santa Ana Plaza is the heart of the city, 
and there is no hour of the day or night that there 
are not people there. If you really wish to see 
the world go by, sit on the stone bench at Santa 
Ana Plaza and look about you. If you stay long 
enough, you may see anybody, from the latest 
naked brown baby to the last chosen president of 
any country you may name. 

Sitting in the plaza is a business by itself in 
this country. The North American uses a park 
as a short cut, cross-corners, to get somewhere. 
But with the tropic citizen, the plaza is an end in 
itself. He is not going anywhere, he is just sit- 
ting in the plaza. He may not even be called a 
bench-warmer — ^the bench is already warm. He 
is sitting in the plaza — that is all. 

The band-night parade in Santa Ana Plaza is 
an institution. Around the central garden they 
saunter, to the swing of the very good music from 
the central pavilion. The outer walk is wide, and 
so is the parade. Clockwise walks the inner cir- 
cle, three abreast, all young men. In the opposite 
direction saunter the young women, also in threes. 
'Round and 'round they go, talking, laughing, 
listening, looking, lingering, while the band plays 
on. It is a good band too. And not the least of 
the exhibit is the clothes the women wear. In 
matter of graceful and apparently comfortable 
costumes the Panamanian girls need apologize to 
none of their northern sisters. Who is to blame 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 45 

the boys if they keep on walking around for the 
sake of seeing the seeable, especially when she 
may be quite worth watching? Every added turn 
means one look more. It is all very dignified 
and proper, but human nature is the same old 
composition in every land, and the blood in the 
heart runs red, no matter what the tint or tan 
without. In a land where the customs of chap- 
eronage are exceeding strict, and no young wom- 
an is supposed to be left alone with any young 
man for the briefest moment, it is easy to see why 
the band nights in the plaza are popular. Os- 
tensibly the young women, after the manner of 
their kind, have no interest in the young men, 
but just the same, their soft brown eyes have the 
same old way of wandering at the right moment ; 
it is the same old trick and it works in the same 
old way. 

The cathedral plaza is rather a different 
matter. Here gather the elite, in numbers on 
concert nights, and more or less on other fair 
evenings. The grown-ups sit about on the 
benches and the children run and play, care-free 
and comfortable. Well-dressed and content, 
these are the best of the old native stock that used 
to live "inside" the walls of Panama that the 
Spanish king thought he should be able to see. 
There are usually a few Americans with the 
crowd, and it is a peaceful and restful family 
scene. Were it not for the incessant clatter of 



46 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



the trolleys and jitneys the place would be a good 
rest-cure. But as matters now stand, 
there is too much pandemoniimi for 
any permanent peace. 
\ Out at the point of the seawall, 
\ near Chiriqui Prison, stands an old 
stone sentry box. It ap- 
pears to belong to the 
prison now, but there was 
a time when the outlook 
from that point on the 
bay of Panama was the 
viewpoint of Panamanian 
life as it faced the Pacific 
and marked the place of 
departure for shores un- 
known. It is prosaic 
enough now to stand be- 
side the little old stone 
tower and watch a big 
liner leave the canal and 
throw back its smoke- 
plume as it steams out to 
sea, having left the Atlantic 
Ocean seven hours before. Gone 
with the days of the explorers and 
pirates are the mystery and men- 
ace of it all. The sentry box meant something 
then. Its lone occupant scanned anxiously the 
horizon for the sail that might mean fresh 




CONVENT DOOR 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 47 

plunders, news from the world beyond, bountiful 
booty or stolen treasure, or perchance a fight to 
the finish with other pirates as unscrupulous as 
the villains on shore. Now the children gather 
there at sunset to play, care-free on the high wall 
overlooking the Gulf of Panama. 

Old Spanish houses are built with the yard in- 
side. It is dehght fully intimate and cozy, but not 
very democratic. Green and clean and cool are 
these little parked "interiors" of the better 
houses. Some of the common patios are dirty 
and disheveled, and the worst of them are better 
left alone, but the American Health Department 
looks after the sanitation of them all. 

Chino (Chinese) shops sell everything, but, 
aside from the fine stores on Central Avenue, are 
mostly devoted to native trade. Out in the in- 
terior the Chinese storekeepers transact prac- 
tically all the business of the country. Wher- 
ever there are two or three families gathered to- 
gether, there the Chinese storekeeper is sure to 
appear, ready to harvest any small or large coins 
that may be in circulation. 

There were at one time about five hundred 
saloons of all sorts in Panama. This number has 
been greatly reduced with hope of complete ex- 
tinction, owing to the exigencies of the near-by 
American soldiers on the Canal Zone. The 
monthly payroll of the Zone is a stream of gold, 
and it is a case of losing that gold or cleaning up 



48 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Panama. Military orders and voluntary boy- 
cotts made Panama a lonesome town for the 
latter part of 1918. 

There is the official lottery, suspiciously lo- 
cated. To be sure, the bishop does not per sou- 




official LOTTERY IN BISHOP S HOUSE, PANAMA 

ally supervise the drawings, and perhaps he does 
not get anything out of it, but no one who knows 
Panama claims such to be the case. When did 
the hierarchy ever oppose a gambling game that 
promised profit for the cause? Gaunt, hungry- 
looking cripples and pobres hang about the cor- 
ners selling lottery tickets. Evidently, none of 
the profits come to these unfortunates. 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 49 

Panama City has its neighborhoods like any 
other Old- World town. "Inside" the old wall 
includes the original fortified town on the little 
peninsula jutting into the bay. Here live offi- 
cials, professional and business men. Beyond 
this lies the town. that overflowed the wall and 
now reaches down to the park in front of the 
Tivoli Hotel. This is the barrio of Santa Ana. 
Caledonia and Guachapali and San Miguel He 
across the railway and serve to fill in the space 
between the Spanish town and the Exposition 
grounds. A mile and a half beyond the palaces 
of the exposition lies Bella Vista, beautiful for 
situation and rivaling Southern California for 
its real estate enterprise. Over toward the Canal 
is Chorilla between the Cemetery and Ancon 
Hill. At the end of the five-cent car fare on the 
line to the savanas is the famous — or infamous 
— bull ring. Who said that bullfights had been 
abandoned? Not much. Between bullfights and 
prize fights the season is not allowed to drag, and 
it must be admitted that the number of American 
patrons of these brutalizing contests is not to the 
credit of the kind. 

The open market where the fishermen come 
ashore is one of the show places of Panama. 
Pangas and chingas and craft of every sort, ex- 
cept the modern kind, bring in on high tide car- 
goes of bananas, coconuts, charcoal, camotes, rice, 
sugar, syrup, rum, papayas, mangoes, lonzones, 



50 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

chiotes, poultry, pigs, ivory nuts and a score of 
fruits and vegetables unnamable by the uniniti- 
ated. When the tide recedes the boats lie high, 
if not very dry, and the unloading proceeds 
apace. It is an interesting and lively scene, and 
the bicker and barter go on by the hour. 

Hard by is the big native market, resort of 
housekeepers and servants in search of commis- 
sary bargains. This one is fairly clean and is the 
morning recreation of thousands of shoppers. 

Panama has its theaters, of the sort to be ex- 
pected. One of the movie houses compares well 
with the best anywhere, and most of the others 
are in good condition. The national theater is a 
credit to the country and forms a section of the 
national palace. On the Canal Zone the club- 
houses, sometimes called Y. M. C. A.'s, put on 
several picture shows a week in commendable 
effort to supply recreation to their patrons. 

The architecture of the old churches is a bit dis- 
appointing to travelers who have seen the splen- 
did buildings of other Latin lands. The Cathe- 
dral has two modern towers, a clock in one of 
them, and the twelve apostles in life size on the 
fa9ade. The Jesuit Church by the Malecon is 
very old and rather interesting. Recently a new 
concrete tower has been added, of striking ap- 
pearance, but not closely in conformity with the 
architecture of the church. This church contains 
a famous old painting of purgatory and heaven. 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 51 

and down below, the flames of the lost. It is not- 
able that in the place of purgatory are bishops, 
priests, and kings. There are ten people in 
heaven, and ten in purgatory, and of each ten 
three are women. Query — Where did the painter 
think that the women belong? It is an interest- 
ing question, especially for the women. 

The big Merced Church on Central Avenue 
has a curious and interesting little street chapel 
on the corner of the sidewalk, and here are ar- 
ranged curious exhibitions at Christmas and 
Easter. I saw here the ancient village of Bethle- 
hem, with the inn and manger and oxen ; but there 
were also a miniature lake with a steamboat, and 
a grocery wagon delivering goods to the ancient 
Bethlehemites. The stores bore advertisements 
of patent breakfast foods. 

No place can be truly romantic until it pos- 
sesses some good ruins, and Panama claims dis- 
tinction in the old Flat-Arch Church near the 
palace. The interior is now used as a garage, 
and no one but the tourist seems to think the 
place of any interest. Two blocks away stands 
the f a9ade of the fine old stone church that has 
been a ruin now for years. The interior is now 
a stable, and the old walls of the college have been 
used for the construction of a modern cheap 
tenement house. The stone front of the old wall 
stands as a fine example of the architecture and 
building of 1751, when the church was finished. 



52 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

The San Filipi Neri Church, at the corner of 
Avenida B and Fourth Streets, is made from 
stone carried in from Old Panama. This church 
is said to have the most beautiful interior in the 
city, but, as it is very rarely opened to the street, 
the visitor will have to accept the statement 
without opportunity to judge for himself. 

The savanas lie northeast of Panama and be- 




EUIN OF FAMOUS FLAT-ARCH CHURCH 



yond the ruins of Old Panama. The rolling 
slopes of green and the growing number of villas 
will make this strip of country valuable and fa- 
mous before long. 

Of Panama's hotels not much need to be said, 
except that they are good of their kind. Latin 
hotel standards are different from those of North 
America, but good judges of hotel hfe have pro- 
nounced those of Panama to be quite endurable. 



PICTURESQUE PANAMA 



53 



There are always two or three daily papers in 
Panama and an indefinite number of weeklies. 
An immemorial custom ex- 
ists by which when any 
citizen has anything on his 
mind that he feels he 
should unload to the profit 
or otherwise of the pubKc, 
a printed pronunciamento 
is issued and circulated 
about the streets by boys, 
handed out freely to every- 
body in sight. This really 
effective method is some- 
times used for important 
matters of state. 

The educational system 
is modeled upon the best 
Latin-American stand- 
ards, with primary schools 
of four grades throughout 
the Republic. Provincial 
centers have schools with 
two, and in a few cases 
four years more. The Na- 
tional Institute, at the foot 

of Ancon Hill, maintains a normal school for 
men and a liceo which grants the degree of Bach- 
elor of Arts upon the completion of about the 
equivalent of the American college freshman 




EIGHTH-GRADE ROOM, PANAMA 



54 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

year. The young women are given a normal 
course in the Women's Normal School at the Ex- 
position grounds. There is no coeducation above 
the primary grades. The Agricultural Experi- 
mental Farm and School, abandoned as an ex- 
periment station, is used as a reform school. 

Taboga Island lies off shore and furnishes a 
point of much interest. It is the week-end Mecca 
of the Zone people and also of many of the Pana- 
manians. There are a good American hotel, sev- 
eral fair native hotels, good fishing, tramping, an 
interesting native village, a healthful climate, and 
a fine view — and all within ten miles of Panama. 

If the prowler is looking for real adventure, 
he can seek for it on Gocos Island, three hundred 
miles south of Panama. Here are said to he 
hidden somewhere ten millions of dollars' worth 
of treasure, stolen from Callao and other points 
between 1820 and 1830. Harvey Montmorency 
wrote it up in a book entitled On the Track of the 
Treasure, and so well did he tell the story that 
four large expeditions have been organized and 
sent to find it. One man is said to have found a 
Httle gold for his pains, but the others went home 
poorer than they came. And if these are too easy 
destinations, there lie the Galapagos Islands off 
the coast of Peru, said to contain many possibil- 
ities, of many kinds. Peru is supposed to have 
the islands on the market, and anybody with the 
money can purchase one, all his own. 



CHAPTER IV 
A CITY OF GHOSTS 

No one has ever satisfactorily explained the 
existence of ghosts in an enlightened world, but 
I have a theory that they survive because they 
render a real service. They lend interest to life 
and at least keep us from forgetting the super (or 
sub) natural. 

Likewise ruins have high value as a link with 
the past, and with neither ruins nor ghosts life 
would become a very flat affair. And if ever a 
spot, by history, tradition, situation, and present 
condition, was marked for rendezvous purposes 
by all the tribe that gibber and squeak and 
wander at night in the dark of the moon, that 
place is Old Panama. 

The history of Old Panama has been told, and 
well told, by other writers. Read it there, and 
read it before you see the place. Many pilgrims 
go out there, poke about among the ruins for a 
quarter of an hour, and exclaim, "Is this all?" 
Without the story the most appreciative pilgrim 
will miss the flavor of the place, but without a 
little romantic appreciation both the story and 
the ruins will fall short of revealing all that the 
place has to give. 

55 



56 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



The old town site was a hopeless jungle until 
the National Institute, under the leadership of 
Dr. Dexter, cleared away the brush and laid bare 
the traces of streets and buildings. 
To-day the place is in good condition 
and one may wander about at will 
and dream to his heart's content. It 
is no place for joy rides, and 
the roadhouse is a blot on the 
place, but there are people 
still who see nothing but 
a refreshment counter and 
worthless stone heaps. 

One of the favorite amuse- 
ments of tourists and other 
people used to be that of dig- 
ging for treasure at Old 
Panama. No one ever found 
anything of value, but it 
made a fine story to tell upon 
return to the States. "When 
I was digging for treasure in 
Old Panama" — just say it 
and see what a flavor it has. 
It is most probable that if the 
ruins were located in a cooler climate, there would 
have been a great deal more digging. Under 
a tropic sun, however, it takes considerable bait 
to induce anyone to indulge in such vigorous 
exercise. 




CONVENT GAEDEN 



A CITY OF GHOSTS 57 

The treasure idea is easy to locate. Peruvian 
gold was all brought up to Panama and stored in 
warehouses until it could be packed across to 
Porto Bello. There were endless fighting and 
plots and schemes and robberies and murders con- 
nected with the gold trade. Many a man lost his 
gold, and many a man his life. And, in conse- 
quence, some of the gold was also lost in the 
melee. What more natural, then, than to look 
about for this lost treasure in the place where 
most of it was stored? 

Xow, there may be millions of dollars' worth of 
old gold somewhere about Old Panama. The 
only difficulty is that no one ever yet has been able 
to find any of it. The probability is that no gold 
was ever left there long enough to be very much 
lost, and the men who did the fighting also took 
care of the gold. But that does not prevent any 
one from "digging for treasure in Old Panama" 
if he wants to do so. 

Nevertheless, there is treasure in Old Panama, 
and it is to be had for the digging. But the dig- 
ging will be, not amid the rocks, but into the 
history of the place. And the digger will find 
rare nuggets for his pains. Balboa, Pizarro, 
Pedrarias laid out this town, and set the pace for 
the wild and unprincipled years that followed. 
And Henry Morgan, adventurer, pirate, and 
general rascal, ended the story as it was begun — 
in crime and blood. 



58 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



Accounts of the construction and character of 
the old city represent it to have been builded with 
much magnificence. All the woods used in build- 
ing were of the fine 
Qative mahoganies, 
and there were 
hangings, tapes- 
tries, and paint- 
ings in the sump- 
tuous houses of the 
men who became 
enormously rich 
from the traffic of 
the times. Re- 
turning ships from 
Europe brought 
luxuries as well as 
necessities, and the 
gold trade people 
maintained regu- 
lar fleets of ships 
and put Panama 
in close touch with 
. the life of the age. 

ROMANTIC OLD CONVENTS SURVIVE ThCTe 3, T G dC- 

scribed two large 
churches, a cathedral, a "hospital," over two thou- 
sand large houses, and several very large estab- 
lishments for the care of the great number of 
pack animals used on the trail. Large quantities 




A CITY OF GHOSTS 59 

of gold, silver, pearls, and gems of various sorts 
were in evidence. In the day of its glory Panama 
was a veritable Arabian Nights city, with some 
two hundred warehouses for the storing of stolen 
treasure. 

The story of the destruction of the old city is 
one of shocking cruelty and lust, and merely 
furnishes the last chapter of the same tale of 
crime that marks the history of the Isthmus from 
the finding of the Peruvian gold to the days when 
the murderous pillages of rival pirates finally de- 
stroyed the commerce of the Isthmus and left 
Panama little more than a memory of former 
glories. The burning of Old Panama marks the 
turning point in Isthmian history and closes for- 
ever the days of conquest. About this time the 
vast supply of Peruvian gold became exhausted, 
and between the failure of loot and the destruc- 
tion of trade by brigandage the Isthmus fell into 
neglect and was nearly lost sight of by the world 
for two hundred years. 

Anyone who knows the story of the place will 
find the ruins fascinating because they show a 
construction of the days when men built strong 
walls because nothing else would stand the strain 
of the lives they lived. Some of the walls stand 
as firm and strong to-day as they did three and 
a half centuries ago, and unless removed by the 
hand of man they will stand here a thousand 
years hence. And when a wall stands for cen- 



60 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



turies in this tropic climate of disintegration it is 

a wall to remember. 

Most conspicuous stands the old church tower, 

splendid and defiant amid 
the wreckage about its 
feet. Straight and strong 
it lifts its lofty head above 
the treetops, and, viewed 
from any angle, is a ma- 
jestic figure. There is no 
construction in modern 
Panama to-day that may 
be compared to the grand 
dignity of that sentinel 
tower. Like some old 
prophet, amid the ruins of 
a wayward people, the 
tower raises its head and 
stands in mute but noble 
witness to the reahty of 
the things that endure. 
For the tower was hon- 
estly built, and therefore 
stands. Against its sohd 
walls, builded from their 
rock foundation straight 

upward, the ravages of time have made but little 

impress. 

The tower was part of the cathedral, and the 

cathedral was one of three or four great churches. 




KUINED TOWER AT OLD 
PANAMA 



A CITY OF GHOSTS 61 

Of at least two others well-preserved ruins still 
remain, and are well worth careful study. The 
reddish-brown coloring of the old walls and the 
vine-covered stone help furnish endless tempta- 
tions for the artist, but no one has yet given ade- 
quate expression, to the splendid possibilities of 
these ruins. 

Still more interesting vistas open to the mind's 
eye of the student with a constructive imagina- 
tion. There were churches many and large and 
beautiful in Old Panama. And there were pi- 
rates wild and wicked and hated in Old Panama. 
Who "ran the town" ? The pirates or the priests ? 
What relations existed between the two? And 
if there were churches of such great beauty and 
strength, why were there also the terrible pirates ? 
What were the churches doing that they did not 
bring about a better city? 

These are hard questions, but to anyone who 
knows conditions to-day, and who knows that 
conditions to-day are better than they were in 
Old Panama, the answer is not far to seek. The 
hungry and helpless peons did not give the money 
to build those costly churches, though they doubt- 
less did the hard work of construction. And if 
the pirates were good givers — and they doubtless 
were, under promise and threat — then they also 
influenced the general scheme of things in Old 
Panama. In short, the churches of Old Panama 
did not make a very good town of it. 



62 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



What a story Jack London could have written 
here! It is too bad that he did not find Old 

Panama before it was too 
late. Not only the ruins, 
but the vista of royal palms 
along the beach, with the lit- 
tle red-white-and-blue crabs 
scurrying about at high tide, 
unite to raise a sense of 
romance that starts the 
wheels of fancy revolving in 
one's brain. All one needs 
is a "long, low, rakish black 
craft in the offing," — ^there 
it is now, the very thing, a 
big chinga, fifty feet long 
with four sails and twenty- 
five men on board, luffing 
and tacking about into the 
little bay just around the 
point. Pirates or fishermen 
— don't inquire too closely; 
either will do, and both are 
useful in romance. 

In one of the churches are 
some old graves, where some 
natives have been buried, 
partly for convenience and perhaps partly from 
sentiment. Fine old walls stand earthquake- 
cracked, but still strong. Of roofs there are, of 




COSTA RICA TEAPICHE, 
OR SUGAR MILL 



A CITY OF GHOSTS 63 

course, none. And back of the church are still 
intact the foundations of a house said to have 
been the house of the governor, and the vaulted 
arches of the old cellar storehouse are still intact. 
A native lives in a shanty near by, and he greets 
the visitor, not with the information that might 
make him useful and get him a tip, but with the 
vacant optimism of those who feel that somehow 
something is coming to them whether they earn 
it or not. 

As for the natives, none of them know any- 
thing about the place. The few that live there 
are of the sort that would camp under the nose of 
the sphinx and never look up into his face. But 
the reader of this can well spend a half day amid 
the most fruitful prowling anywhere in Panama. 
He may gaze at the splendid tower till the broken 
walls about it rise again, and the old tiled roof 
once more covers the worshiping congregations 
within, and the drone of mass and the fragrance 
of incense again ascend before the high altar. 
And down the old street, with its one-story 
houses, once more wind the pack trains and mule- 
teers and men and women and children. There is 
excitement everywhere, and commotion and curs- 
ing, and everybody runs down to the beach. And 
if you will turn about and gaze out to sea, you 
will see there a curious craft with freakish sails, 
and when it drops anchor and the boat pulls 
ashore, you will see old Almagro himself step out 



64 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

on the sands sword in hand, and with rough and 
profane commands, take charge of the unloading 
of his golden cargo. There will be wild times in 
Old Panama to-night, for the pack trains have 
returned from Porto Bello with a cargo of rum, 
and the sailors from Peru have been long at sea, 
detained by unfavorable winds, and, hke sailors 
of other times and climes, they are thirsty. Out 
from the church door comes the tonsured priest; 
he shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, and 
makes his way down to where the great Almagro 
stands, a commanding figure amid the confusion. 
For the commander has the gold, and, hke all 
explorers of his time, he will be in need of a 
proper blessing by the priest ; and the padre, be- 
ing human, can use a Httle of the gold. 

But while you gaze and dream, "dear reader," 
the vision fades and "the tumult and the shouting 
dies," and there stand the ruins, and there swings 
the sweep of the tropic sea, and you are again in 
the twentieth century, a little richer in mental 
imagery for your short excursion back into the 
sixteenth. 

Which is to say that dreaming is easy at Old 
Panama. Try it yourself. 



CHAPTER V 
THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 

What the desert is to Arizona and the ice to 
Alaska the jungle is to tropical America. He 
who has never traveled through a tropical jungle 
on a trusty mule has missed something out of his 
life. He should go back and begin over again. 

The jungle is much maligned and often misin- 
terpreted. The jungle has a place in the agricul- 
tural life of the tropics, but it has also a place in 
the aesthetic and moral life of mankind. Here 
at last there is room, and the starved and stunted 
life may relax its struggle and strain and expand 
under the luxuriance and exuberance of a world 
where all the forces of life overflow and run riot 
in a thousand fantastic forms of energy and 
growth. Like the uncharted vastness of the polar 
sea and the unbounded, shimmering mirage of 
the wide desert, here at last there is plenty and to 
spare. When a man has stinted and economized 
all his life on a New England hillside amid stones 
and stumps, the jungle takes the load off his soul 
and sets him free in a universe of new and un- 
tested dimensions. 

The jungle is misunderstood. There are jun- 
gles unworthy of the name, but these vast Pan- 
es 



66 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



^k^ 



amanian hothouses are a different matter. They 
are not the bottomless morasses of deadly snakes 
and poisonous vapors. Since men have learned 
how to live in the tropics these terrors have large- 
ly retreated to the highly 
colored accounts of trop- 
ical travelers who took 
one look and fled — ^to 
write a book of timely 
warning to the uniniti- 
ated. These jungles are 
not the haunts of hidden 
horrors and poisoned ar- 
rows. Ferocious tree- 
dwellers may inhabit the 
unknown recesses of the 
upper Amazon, but they 
do not hve in the jungles 
of Central America and 
Panama. 

It takes just three con- 
ditions to make a good 
jungle, and these three 
are all present in this fas- 
cinating country. Moisture, temperature, and 
soil; mix them in the right proportions and you 
can produce a jungle at the North Pole, but no- 
where can the mixture be located except in the 
tropics. When one remembers the painstaking 
toil expended on the rocky fields of northern New 




^-j-j 



PAPAYA TREES 



THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 67 

York and then turns to a land where the problem 
is not to encourage but to prevent growth, one 
wonders how it happened that our ancestors 
blundered into an environment reeking with dif- 
ficulties when they might have had all this over- 
flow of abundance for the taking. 

There are several brands of jungle, to be sure, 
and distinct differences of kind may be located 
easily. The jungle of the overflowed level river 
land is a very different formation from that which 
climbs over the rolling hills and up the mountain 
slopes. But everywhere there is the same reckless 
riot of power and life. Fantastic growths are 
here just because there is so much growing to do 
and so much energy back of the roots that there 
are not conventional forms of Hfe enough to go 
around and life boils over in every conceivable 
absurdity of form and habit. This is no place for 
a niggard. But it is a splendid antidote for 
smallness of soul and for that dried-up-ness that 
settles down hke a pall upon the spirits of men 
who never in their lives have had enough of any- 
thing or breathed an atmosphere of abundance. 

It must be a petrified soul that can resist this 
wanton abandon of vegetable life. How a man 
can spend three days in this full-blown exhibition 
of vital energy at work in the vegetable world and 
ever be small again is more than can be readily 
understood. 

Here is a world where no one ever need cry for 



68 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



more; there is too much abeady. After a few 
days of it one longs to get out in the open, to see 
a barren spot somewhere just to rest the surfeited 
soul a bit. It's all for the asking; in fact, there 

is no chance to ask; it is 
poured out of the horn of 
nature's plenty, and all the 
color and charm and fantasy 
and music and laughter and 
glory of it are piled in wild 
profusion a hundred feet 
high, and you cannot get 
away if you will. Nature 
at least has a chance to 
show what she can really 
do, and it is yours for the 
looking. 

What makes up a jun- 
gle? Well, that's hard 
to say. There are mighty 
trees of cedar and mahog- 
any and a hundred lesser 
breeds, lifting their heads 
into the tropic sky. There 
are palms and giant ferns 
of course. There are wonderful purple and ma- 
genta and crimson-topped trees, whose glaring 
flat colors fairly shriek at you like the bedlam of a 
paint box let loose on the sky. Sturdy lignum 
vitas trees stand conscious of their high value and 




BANANAS AND SUGAR CANE 



THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 69 

rare qualities. Ferns in profusion, vast, varie- 
gated and immense, line the banks of streams and 
hide in the shadows of the great trees. Orchids, of 
course, winding streams strewn with the flowers 
and foliage of the dense mass overhead, entranc- 
ing water streets and winding Venetian tunnels 
through forests so thick that the sun never pene- 
trates the shadowed fastnesses below. There are 
paraqueets, parrots, singing canaries, alligators, 
bananas, bamboos, singing winds, warbling blue- 
birds, blackbirds that can render a tune, purples 
and blues and crimsons and browns, all poured 
out and mixed together without stint. It is fas- 
cinating for a few hours, but after a time you get 
overloaded and are ready to cry "Enough." It's 
great, but a little stupefying till one gets used to 
it. 

The jungle of the mountains is essentially dif- 
ferent from and more interesting than that of the 
level swamps. Both are largely uninhabited, for 
men naturally like to have a little outlook both 
for their lives and about their habitations. 

But the growth is about equally dense, pro- 
vided the soil and moisture are right for the pro- 
duction of real jungle. From Puerto Limon to 
Almirante is about one hundred and twenty miles 
overland, and there was a time when practically 
every mile of this distance was untouched jungle. 
The United Fruit Company has conquered most 
of it, imtil there is now but a day's journey on 



70 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



horseback through the connecting Hnk between 
the two raiboad terminal points at Estrella and 
the Talamanca Valley. The one hundred miles 
of rails run almost entirely through the endless 
fields of bananas. But once this was all primitive 
wilderness; that is, we think it was, but some of 

the superintendents of this 
clearing and planting work 
say that they have discov- 
ered numerous evidences 
that there was a time in ages 
past when practically all of 
this vast area was under 
some sort of cultivation. 

There would be a railroad 
now across the gap of 
twenty miles but for the fact 
that this gap includes a 
mountain range with rush- 
ing rivers and steeps, gorges 
and almost impenetrable 
forests. Occasional travel- 
ers cross this range by the aid of sturdy mules, 
but there is yet nothing that could by any strain 
of language be called a trail. There is simply a 
"blaze" through the forest and occasional marks 
where some floundering traveler has preceded 
the venturesome explorer through the depths of 
some yawning mudhole. 

I crossed this range on a day when the sun was 




CACAO PODS 



THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 71 

shining overhead, but only two or three times did 
its rays fall upon the "trail." The overhead 
growth was so thick that there was nothing but 
dense shadow below. A hundred and fifty feet 
these immense trees rose into the air, carrying 
upward with them festoons of hanging vines, 
swinging rattan, and clinging orchids. Curious 
enough are some of these trees, with their wind- 
ing external buttresses and thin flanges thrown 
out to brace against the winds. Banyan trees 
reach out their long arms and drop their fingers 
down into the soil and take root and continue 
until the tree literally "stalks" its way across the 
mountain side. There are rubber trees and cedar 
trees and mahogany trees and prickly poisoned 
trees that are the terror of the natives, and trees 
bearing all manner of jungle fruits and flowers 
and swarming with chattering birds and creep- 
ing things. Rattan "ropes" an inch in di- 
ameter and two hundred feet long trip the un- 
wary traveler, and it is useless to try to break 
them. They are like steel cables. Wild birds 
are plentiful, occasional baboons bark and bray, 
and the mountain streams splash and plunge 
their way through the ferns and flowers. The 
Estrella River forms the highway for several 
miles, and its rocky torrent must be forded a score 
of times. 

He who has never tried to travel this "road" 
has a new experience in store. There are hill- 



72 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

sides that are all but perpendicular, which would 
not be so bad, but they are a mixture of clay and 
soap stone and moisture, and it is practically im- 
possible to stand erect without holding on to 
nearby sapHngs. How a laden mule can navigate 
such a causeway of destruction is a mystery to be 
explained only by people who understand mules. 
And I rode a mule whose mastery of the art of 
trail-navigation left nothing to be learned. In 
the ignorance of my novitiate I alighted before 
the first precipitous descent to which we came. 
The mule, with the conservatism born of experi- 
ence, took his time to make the descent, and I 
essayed to go before and show him how to do it. 
He watched me with intense interest, while I 
gingerly approached the edge of the shppery 
dechvity and started down. As a descent it was a 
complete success. At the second step I slipped 
on the wet clay and went rolling and coasting to 
the bottom, whither I arrived in record time, 
plastered from head to foot with the raw mate- 
rial of which pottery is made. I struggled to my 
feet and looked up at the mule. He still re- 
garded me intently, and I think that he winked, 
at least his ear did. Then he deliberately put his 
front feet over the edge, gathered in his hind 
feet, and with all fours together, sat down and 
gracefully slid to the bottom of the hill. He ar- 
rived right side up at the bottom, munching a 
mouthful of grass, which he seized in passing on 



THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 73 



the way down, and turned to look at me with an 
expression that needed no interpreter. And I 
took the hint and stayed on his 
back most of the day. 

After a soHd day of this dense 
growth where we could not see 
more than a stone's throw at any 
time it was with a distinct sense 
of relief that we caught sight of 
daylight at last through an open- 
ing ahead and came upon 
the fringes of the Tala- 
manca plantation. 

The Talamanca Valley 
is something quite worth 
while in itself. Years ago 
it was inhabited by Span- 
ish refugees who fled back 
from the bloody attacks 
of the ravenous Carib- 
bean pirates of the six- 
teenth century. Their 
little plantations were not 
large and the land was not 
cleared very thoroughly, 
but they shifted their 

planting places until much of the present area 
was covered sooner or later with platanas. The 
view of this valley from the hillside is surpass- 
ingly beautiful. Thirty miles long, ten miles 




PROPOSED LOCATION FOR 
REST CURE 



74 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

wide, and surrounded by mountains and forests, 
the whole floor of the valley is one vast, waving, 
level field of bananas, and there are few things 
better to look upon than a valley level full of 
banana tops. From twenty to forty feet high 
they stand, and their long, shady corridors are 
like the aisles of some great series of cathedral 
chapels, waiting for worshipers within. Through 
the middle of the valley runs the stream of the 
upper Sexola Hiver with its three tributaries and 
their bluffs. The Changuanola Railway, which 
is the name under which the United Fruit Com- 
pany moved its bananas and its men in this great 
plantation, runs the length of the valley, and the 
line of rails is punctuated by the white cabins of 
the black employees and the houses and offices of 
the plantation superintendents and foremen. 

Dominating the whole valley stands old Pico 
Blanco, or White Top. There is no snow at the 
simmiit, but there is nearly always a white cloud 
cap there, hence the name. This noble mountain 
is the interest and admiration of all dwellers in 
the valley. Its top lists eleven thousand feet 
above the sea. It is not as high as Pike's Peak 
nor Shasta, but it towers well up toward the level 
of Fujiyama, and beside it Mount Washington 
looks like a pigmy and the Adirondacks are mere 
foothills. Back in the canons and forests of the 
mountain range live the curious Talamanca In- 
dians, whose tribal customs indicate a close affin- 



THE SPELL OF THE JUNGLE 75 

ity between their ancestors and those of the fam- 
ous Indians of Quirigua. 

The difference between the jungle and the 
dividend-paying plantation is one of organiza- 
tion, capital, administration, and toil. Add these 
to the jungle and you have the plantation. Take 
them away from the plantation and in a very 
short time the jungle is again supreme. Crowd- 
ing around the corners, peeping over the edges, 
and creeping ever onward, the jungle pushes its 
jealous way behind the footprints of the men who 
essay to conquer its wild ways. But once de- 
feated, the jungle becomes a slave bearing costly 
burdens for its master — ^man. 



CHAPTER VI 
LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 

"Forty years ago I took a bath, and the next 
day I felt chilly, and then — " 

"Never mind forty years ago. What is the 
matter this morning, and why have you come to 
me for medicine?" chants the seasoned employer 
of plantation labor. 

"That is what I was telling you, senor. Forty 
years ago I took a bath, and the next day I felt 
chilly, and then I thought that I had made a 
mistake, and so I went — " 

"Now, see here. I have no interest nor cm^ios- 
ity about forty years ago. What is the matter 
with you now?" 

"Be patient, senor. This is important, and I 
will tell you all. Forty years ago — " and after 
devious dodgings the tale terminates in a case of 
fever or indigestion, or mayhap only plain drunk. 

It is ever thus with the tropic tao, or peon, or 
ignorante, or whatever may be called the people 
who have grown up with the soil and have risen 
not any above it. The petty official who hears 
complaints in any tropic land hstens to marvel- 
ous reminiscences through deep jungles of im- 
aginative memory before reaching present facts. 

76 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 77 

"Twenty-five years ago I had the toothache, 
and then the next week I had a bad dream, and 
after that I had no suerte [luck] at all, until one 
saint's day I drank rum and ate rice, and the 
rice make me sick — " is merely the opening 
chapter. 

Every employer of tropic labor must be judge 
and jury for a docket of petty cases that have to 
be adjusted if the wheels of industry are not to be 
paralyzed in their work. Newcomers at this busi- 
ness of sitting in the seat of judgment hear mar- 
velous stories of oppression and outrage, in which 
the accuser is always innocent — and always alone, 
if possible. But experience breeds disillusion- 
ment and skepticism deep and wide, and soon the 
amateur Solomon learns to distrust every story, 
most of all the first one told. For, after the 
plaintiff has sworn that he is telling the truth, or 
may all the saints strike him dead, and has un- 
rolled his woes in orderly sequence, he stands with 
critical eye, watching to see what impression his 
art has made upon the puzzled personage of 
power. 

And when the adjuster of affairs scorns the 
tale and says, "Get out with you. I don't believe 
a word of that stuff," the beggar bows and smiles 
a deprecating smile and begins all over again 
with a revised version of the case, which bears 
very little resemblance to the first story, and 
again stands back to observe what better success 



78 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



he may hope for this time. And there appears to 
be no end to the ready versions and variations of 
the woes of the downtrodden exponent of virtue 

whose humble bearing seems 
to exude virtue from every 
protruding bare spot through 
his rags. 

"Last Wednesday morn- 
ing, I got up, and — ^would 
you beheve it? — ^there was 
nothing in the house. There 
was no yucca [counting off 
on his fingers], no plantanas, 
no huevos, no carne, no mais, 
no azucar, no arroz — absolu- 
tamente nada. Yes, it was 
last Wednesday — no, no, 
senor, I am a liar — ^it was last 
Tuesday morning. And, 
senor, my children were hun- 
gry, and I remembered that 
there was nothing — " and so 
on the story goes to its chmax 
in the claim that a certain 
party, not present, owes the 
complainer fifty cents for 
real or imaginary value bestowed, and will the 
owner please collect the fifty cents for the starv- 
ing children? 

And if this tale is unsatisfactory, comes im- 




PICTURESQUE JUNGLE 
TOWNS 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 79 

mediately a fresh version to the effect that it is 
another man who owes a dollar because he 
tramped across some young corn and spoiled the 
crop. 

It is this fertility of imagination that makes up 
for any sort of accurate information. To the 
American the amazing thing about these people 
is that they know so little about their own very 
interesting country. The American must know 
in order to boom his town, but the tropic native 
has no idea of booming his town. There is no fun 
in booming, there is nothing to boom, and a 
boomed town would be always stirring about or 
starting something, and would be a nuisance any- 
way. 

I stood in a village, quaint and curious, and 
wondered how old it might be. The bells hang- 
ing to a cross beam in front of the old church bore 
figures on their rims — 1722, they said; and they 
looked it, every inch — or year. 

Came the young curate of the parish, a good- 
looking and intelligent native, who talked a little 
with us pleasantly, and lured us into the old 
church, where he immediately improved the occa- 
sion by getting the collection basket and holding 
it under our noses. "It is a special saint's day," 
he explained. 

"How many people live here?" 

He could not tell. 

"How old is the church?" we wanted to 



80 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



know, thinking to get a morsel of information 
for our crmnb of contribution. 

He did not know. The 
question was entirely new to 
him. He had been born in the 
town, and later showed us with 
pride the house in which him- 
self, his mother, and his grand- 
mother had been born, but as 
to the number of inhabitants 
or the age of the church it had 
never occurred to him to in- 
quire. 

But presently inspiration 
came to his aid. There was an 
ancient woman still living at 
more than a hundred years; 
surely she would know the an- 
swer to some of these curious 
questions. 

We called on the old wom- 
an. She was nothing but 
bones and parchment, sitting 
with her chin on her knees on a 
small platform of slats which 
she had not left for over two 
years. She claimed one hun- 
dred and two years, which was undoubtedly cor- 
rect, as baptismal records are usually accurately 
kept. She certainly looked the part. The stu- 




TORTILLAS ARE STAPLE 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 



81 



diante sat down on the "bed," placed his hand 
kindly on the old woman's shoulder, and told her 
that though she was blind there were three 
strangers who had come to see her and congratu- 
late her on her great age. She was pleased and 
said so, but her. mind was as 
feeble as her body, and there 
was little that she could say. 
When asked as to the date of 
the "blessing" of the church, 
she said, "O yes, certainly I 
can name it — it was on Saint 
John's day." 

"That's fine," enthused the 
curate. "Now, what year was 
it, grandma?" 

"Ah, that is another matter. 
I can't tell you now, but if 
you will come to-morrow, I 
may be able to remember it 
then." 

We left the next morning, 
of course, without the date of 
the dedication day, but what information was 
lacking on this point was amply made up in in- 
formation concerning the population. We asked 
seven people the question and received seven dif- 
ferent answers, ranging from three hundred to 
five thousand. We counted a hundred odd 
houses, indicating six or seven hundred people. 




JUNGLE FOLK 



82 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



one 



but no one there had any idea or any interest in 
the matter. What difference did it make any- 
way? 

The town of Nata, eighty miles west of 
Panama, was founded in 1520, 
iar after the founding of 
'anama, and one hundred 
years before the 
Pilgrims landed at 
Plymouth Rock. 
Old Panama has 
been a ruin for 
two and one half 
centuries, leaving 
Nata as the oldest 
inhabited town in 
the New World — 
no small distinc- 
tion. 

I asked the lead- 
ing official if he 
knew how old the 
town was, and he 
said that he understood that it was "very old." 
When I suggested that it was the oldest town in 
America he nodded politely and talked of some- 
thing else. I called on the priest, an intelHgent 
and friendly man, who also understood that the 
town "was very old," but its priority of claim to 
the oldest living municipal inhabitant of the 




THE COTTER 8 SATURDAY NIGHT 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 83 

Americas had little interest for him. He talked 
on, complaining bitterly of the bad morals of the 
people and the small financial proceeds which the 
parish yielded its spiritual leader. 

It is easy to disparage any people, especially 
if they speak a different language from your 
own. Most of the things said against the illit- 
erate natives of any country are true, but the 
trouble is that they are only a small fraction of 
the truth. 

A large employer of native labor, who took 
pride in treating his men well and paying them 
promptly, complained to me that he never could 
keep steady labor on his place for the reason that 
the men earned enough in one week to keep them 
drunk for the next fortnight, and hence worked 
only one week out of three, leaving their families 
to starve or shift for themselves as best they 
might. And he told the truth. 

But he did not tell it all. This same employer 
distilled the rum on his own place and regarded 
it as a paying business. When other employers 
raised the price for labor and produce he refused 
to do so on the ground that the more they had the 
worse off they were. On the surface it might 
seem to be true. 

But these same laborers, even saving all pos- 
sible margin of wages, could not have lived in 
anything like comfort on sixty-five cents per 
day. Most of them never see a newspaper, and 



84 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

could scarcely read, and not at all understand it 
if they did see it. There is not an item of news, 
a trace of historical knowledge or perspective, a 
gleam of scientific understanding, a moving pic- 
ture show, or a lecture on any subject, or a mus- 
ical program, nor any one of the thousand things 
that add interest and widen the horizon of hfe — 
none of these things ever enter the remotest areas 
of his consciousness. He lives in the flat, narrow 
confines of a life so small, so cramped, so pos- 
sessed by superstition and terror and ill will that 
he is not many removes from the cattle with which 
he works. When this man would celebrate his 
saint's day he gets drunk, organizes a bull fight, 
and gives vent to every low impulse of his nature. 

Is it any wonder? The only tingle of interest 
that touches his soul comes from adventures in 
the realm of unfaithfulness and drunkenness. 
How many of the rest of us would do any better 
if born and bred in the mire of his social inherit- 
ance? 

There is such a thing as moral hookworm. 
Saint Paul called it by another term, but its 
symptoms are unchanged. The unshod soul, 
shuffling through the mire of degradation, ac- 
quires from the lower stratum of his environment 
the infection of a spiritual destitution that lowers 
moral vitaHty to the minimum. 

How comes this benumbed conscience and de- 
praved practice? What is the matter that the 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 



85 



average of legitimacy for all Central America is 
thirty per cent of the total population, while the 
seventy per cent are born of 
unmarried parents? 

It is not for lack of 
churches. Every town has 
its church, and the church is 
invariably the best building 
in the town. It stands on the 
plaza, commanding, central, 
and usually more or less 
beautiful. One can scarcely 
get out of sight of a church 
tower in any thickly settled, 
level country. And the 
churches are large enough to 
contain almost the whole 
population of the town, at 
least by taking them in sev- 
eral installments at mass 
hours. 

It is not for want of 
priests. There are priests in 
every town, and most of them 
carry out pretty faithfully church bells of arrai- 

, . « , . . , JAN, CAST 1722 

the routine oi ecclesiastical 
observances that make up the day's program. 
Black gowns, tonsured heads, and beads and 
rosaries are seen everywhere, and the padre is 
usually the most influential man in the town. 




86 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

It is not for want of religion. Every house of 
any pretensions has its holy pictures, often its 
crucifix, and usually its rosary. Women in num- 
bers attend mass and go to confession. 

It is not for want of opportunity on the part 
of priests or church. It is not because of "church 
competition." Here we have a unity complete 
and final. 

For three hundred and ninety-eight years the 
priests and their church have had sole, exclusive, 
and continuous occupation of Nata, the oldest 
town in America. I was probably the first Prot- 
estant missionary who ever walked the streets 
of the place. Here in the oldest town, with the 
longest occupation and the undisturbed opportu- 
nity, should be found a fair chance with these 
people. 

And what has it done? The open-minded and 
friendly priest complained bitterly of the fact 
that in his parish only five per cent of his people 
were born of married parents. Ninety-five per 
cent were registered on his books as "Naturales." 
The year before he had administered over three 
hundred baptisms and had celebrated only three 
marriages. "I can't get them to marry," he 
groaned. "Practically speaking, almost no one 
is married." 

Is Nata worse than other towns ? Possibly so, 
but it must be remembered that the "church" has 
had a longer chance there than in any other city 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 87 

in all America, and perhaps when the other towns 
have been exposed for the same length of time to 
the system, they will show equally advanced re- 
sults ! 

There is this thing to be said about the char- 
acteristic attitude of the average priest toward 
his people: he always despises them. In many 
lands I have found this to be true. Discouraged 
by the failure of his system to produce spiritual 
life, or even good morals, he complains bitterly 
that the people are indifferent, careless, negh- 
gent, immoral, unfaithful, and, not least of vices, 
they are poor pay. If they are these things, no 
one knows it better than the man who hears their 
secret confessions. And that this man should 
come to a chronic attitude of distrust toward the 
products of his own spiritual husbandry is one of 
the severest indictments against the system that 
produces indifference on the part of the people 
and cynicism in the heart of the priest. 

What was the church doing to remedy this sit- 
uation with its deadly monotony, its superstition, 
ignorance, and unmorality ? 

The church was maintaining its round of for- 
mulas, saints' days, masses, confessions, baptisms, 
funerals for-what-the-traffic-would-bear. Showy 
processions and occasional celebrations were the 
circus and movie for the people. And on the con- 
fession of the troubled priest himself, there was 
no moral result. Out of the dead past stood a 



88 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

miiminied memory of the once living church, and 
its mumbled incantations had no power to make 
the dry bones live. 

The only power that seems able to stir new life 
in the old mausoleum is the advent of a vigorous 
Protestant work. In rage and bitterness the 
powers bestir themselves and begin to defame 
and persecute their disturbers, and in the end, 
they inevitably give some attention to reviving 
their own decaying program. 

How can a man be well when he is one hundred 
dollars away from a doctor? With four doctors 
located among two hundred thousand people 
scattered over a radius of forty by a hundred 
miles, and all fees exorbitantly high, what is a 
poor man to do when illness overtakes his house- 
hold? What is he to do? Why, nothing at all, 
except await the end, either of his illness or of 
both infirmity and himself. What the missionary 
needs is no less Bibles than castor oil and quinine 
and iodine. I think that I would begin with a 
moving-picture program and a clinic, and when 
a little physical health appeared, and some sort 
of interest began to loosen the rusty hinges before 
what occupies the mental space, I would begin to 
talk of something to make life worth living. It 
was the way of the Master to heal and teach and 
arouse, and the whole program of missionary 
work might be founded on "I am come that they 
might have Hf e, and that they might have it more 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 



89 



abundantly." That is the key to the process. 
These people are not bad; they are crippled. 
They are not vicious; they are lifeless. They are 
not rebels: they are very much untaught, back- 
ward children. 

The system of public schools is growing apace. 




FIRST-GRADE ROOM, PANAMA 



but it has a tremendous task, small support from 
the parents, and often open opposition from the 
priests. In one town a citizen remarked that on 
examination day at the close of the term not a 
single pupil came to school, but that it made no 
difference, as they were all promoted and would 
live just as long whether they were promoted or 
not. (How I would have enjoyed that, as a 



90 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

boy!) In another town the supervisor had criti- 
cized unfavorably the people for certain careless 
habits, whereupon the teachers took offense, all 
resigned and closed the schools. The secretary 
of education siding with the supervisor, all schools 
remained closed, and the children were happy. 

There is one safety valve left for people in 
such lives, and that is the world-old prerogative 
of talk. In the long evenings, by the roadsides, 
on the street corners, over the balconies flows an 
endless stream of talk. Prattle and chatter and 
gossip and slander flow on and make up the only 
scenarios the people know. Most of it is harm- 
less. Some of it is aimless, and all of it is fruitless 
of anything except to save the mind from utter 
blankness. 

They were chattering away in the evening, 
three or four women seeming unconscious of me, 
a traveler stopping for the night. One subject 
held undivided attention for much time — What 
shall we cook for breakfast? And from that it 
was but a step to that eternal solace of feminine 
conversation — ^the shortcomings of men in gen- 
eral and husbands in particular. One of the ani- 
mated declaimers arose, struck a dramatic atti- 
tude, and said, "To expect that any man should 
be of any use about the house is impossible," and 
the eloquent shrug of her shoulders underscored 
the remark. In vain I broke in and protested 
that in the United States it often happened that 



LIFE AT THE BOTTOM 91 

the men were successfully commandeered and 
detailed to the work of kitchen police, but the 
only reply was an arched eyebrow and another 
shrug. "Tell that to the marines," was what she 
meant. 

There are two measures of quantity. Either it 
is "No hay sufficiente" ("There are not enough") 
or "Hay bastante, bastante" ("Plenty, plenty") . 
The population of the next town is one or the 
other of these measures. The distance to the 
river, the crops, the number of children in the 
family, the tale of the years that is told — ^it is all 
one thing or the other. And the standard, in con- 
trast with the artificial measures of a high civil- 
ization, is at least true to life. Either there is 
enough or there is not enough — that is about as 
close a distinction as the day's experience affords. 
For that matter, all the rest of us are on one side 
or the other of the same cleaving line of necessity. 

That everybody should blame everybody else 
for whatever may happen to be the matter is the 
most natural thing in the world. Whom shall we 
blame if not some one else? 

It is the fault of the officials that the country 
is poor. It is the fault of the large landowner 
that there is no development. It is the fault of 
the municipalities that the towns are not better 
kept, it is because of the officials that justice is 
not better administered. It is the fault of the 
Canal Zone that the good days are gone forever, 



92 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

and it is the fault of the American government 
that there are certain restrictions on native ten- 
dencies to move forward by the backward jerks 
of revolution. A Costa Rican once said to me, 
"This war in Europe amounts to nothing; but if 
we could get up a good old-fashioned revolution, 
I would be on the job to-morrow." 

The virtues of these people are a surprising 
list, considering their scant opportunities. They 
are kindly in dealing with foreigners who show 
themselves friendly. They do not as a rule abuse 
their children, which the West Indian is apt to 
do if he is of the baser sort. The native is hospit- 
able and courteous and always willing to oblige, 
provided he knows what to say or do. To be sure, 
the inventory of his information is disappointing, 
even concerning such subjects as the distance to 
the next town and the market value of rice, but 
he will tell all he knows and share what rice he 
has. Traveling through the country alone, I 
have been shown every kindness and entertained 
with the best that was to be had, and often sent on 
my way without being allowed to pay for what I 
had received. "Do you think I would take 
money from a guest?" protested a hospitable 
host with whom I had spent the night and who 
had fed my horses, the guide, and myself, and had 
entertained us all evening with discussion of 
many matters. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE INTERIOR 

We had reached the town of Anton the day be- 
fore, and I had sent the guide back with the 
horses and purposed to make my way alone. The 
morning was fresh and bahny, as befitted the dry 
season, even if a night spent on an antiquated 
cot in a room next to that occupied by a man with 
a racking cough and a rooster with a clarion voice, 
were not a perfect repose. The rapport between 
the fowl and the afflicted was complete : when one 
of them broke the silence, the other immediately 
took up the refrain. At breakfast I suggested 
to the good wife of the host that I had heard that 
if a board were placed above a rooster's head so 
that he could not stretch upward, he would not 
crow. She was all solicitude at once at the sug- 
gestion that the noisy cock had disturbed my 
slumbers, and I had to protest my indifference 
to such serenades. 

Down the street I found a little store where 
the owner had a horse or two to hire upon occa- 
sion. Thirty minutes of bicker and I was astride 
a wiry little native pony to which a bridle was 
unknown, and out through the stately palms and 
luxurious bananas I made my way to the open 

93 



04 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

country eastward. The river was thronged with 
horses led to water, and women busy with their 
domestic laundry. It was quaint and pictur- 
esque. In some such manner might the ancient 
Egyptians have gone about their morning tasks. 
I have seen exactly the same procedure in the 
Philippines and by the rivers of southern China. 

A mile or two from the town the trail mounted 
a rolling hillock and I pinched myself to remem- 
ber that I was not in New Mexico. Straight 
ahead rolled the almost level llanos for miles until 
they were lost in the hills by Chame, and the pur- 
ples and pinks of the six -thousand-feet summits 
were like a frame for a picture whose southern 
limits were in the glint of the blue sunmier sea. 
It was a picture and a promise. For two hours 
the nervous little pony followed the trail across 
the smooth plains and frequent streams. If 
ever a land was spread out as a challenge to the 
plow and seeder, here it was. 

I sought a colonization site, where I had heard 
of a dozen plucky Americans who were undertak- 
ing a plantation on cooperative lines. At last I 
found it in the midst of as fine a tract of land as 
lies beneath the tropic skies. An old-fashioned 
farm dinner made life worth living after native 
"chow" for days. Modern tractors, plows, a ton 
of cotton seed, and other signs of enterprise did 
much to make the place seem like somewhere in 
the great Southwest. But the enterprising 



THE INTERIOR 



05 



Americans were harboring no delusions regard- 
ing the nature of their undertaking. They meant 
business and had counted the cost. 

An American on the Canal Zone invested his 
savings in land in the interior, and during the va- 
cation built a good wire fence. On his second 
visit the fence was totally destroyed by ax, fire, 
and wire-cutters. The owner appealed to the 




THE BEAUTIFUL SAVANAS OF COSTA RICA 



local alcalde, a brother of the provincial governor. 
He demanded redress for his wrongs. The judge 
heard his story, and then, striking a dramatic 
attitude, smote his breast, and exclaimed, "If 
these my friends had not done this thing, I should 
have done it myself." Which was to say, no 
foreigners need apply in those parts. It is prob- 
able that this outrage could not occur under pres- 
ent conditions. 

"The Panama politician thinks that all the re- 
public begins in Las Bovedas and ends in Las 
Semanas," remarked a plantation owner of the 
interior country. 



96 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Whether this is true or not, few people realize 
or know anything of the splendid country that 
lies back of the Canal Zone and out of reach of 
the flitting traveler. To the average Canal Zone 
employee all Panama begins at dock seven and 
ends in the Administration Building. And for 
the tourist who comes to do the Canal in a day, of 
course, everything begins with the Washington 
Hotel and ends with the Tivoli. 

But Panama is something vastly more signifi- 
cant than a couple of slow-service, high-priced 
hotels. The Isthmian Republic is an empire in 
possibilities, entirely apart from the Canal Zone, 
though the development of the latent riches of the 
country is most vitally related to the Canal 
enterprise. And the rich belt of land that 
binds together two continents is something very 
much larger than the interesting little city that 
bears the name of Panama. 

Back of the ten-mile strip controlled by the 
United States stretches a land abounding in 
natural resources which make it potentially a 
factor of agricultural and economic importance. 
To the uninformed citizen of the United States 
and other countries the Repubhc of Panama 
is a mere shoestring tying together the two con- 
tinents, lest the pair become separated and 
one of them lost. We look at the Isthmus in 
contrast with the two vast continents that He to 
the northwest and southeast, and the connecting 



THE INTERIOR 97 

link appears small. Panama suffers from com- 
parison with its big neighbors. 

Compared with well-known and important in- 
sular holdings in the Caribbean group, Panama 
assumes entirely different proportions. Panama 
is two thirds as large as Cuba and has one third 
of Cuba's population. Panama is about the size 
of Portugal, is four times as large as Salvador, 
seven and one half times as large as Jamaica, and 
nine times the size of Porto Rico. Panama is as 
large as all New England except Maine, and 
nearly equals the combined area of New Jersey, 
Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. 

There are interior areas of well-watered, rich 
soil that equal whole States in size and yet are 
entirely unknown to many residents of the Canal 
Zone. The Chiriqui Province has a coast hne of 
one hundred and thirty-three miles and contains 
as much land as Delaware, Rhode Island, and 
Long Island combined. The rich agricultural 
region in the provinces of Code, Veraguas, Los 
Santos, and Herrera is as large as the State of 
Connecticut. The region east of Panama City 
reaching out to Chepo is as large as Rhode 
Island, and in the Darien country is an area al- 
most unknown, but abounding in rich resources 
which would cover the map of New Jersey with 
a good margin. 

It is supposed that no one lives in this large 
territory except the Americans on the Canal 



98 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Zone and inhabitants of the two cities of Panama 
and Colon. This is also indicative of ignorance. 
The Republic of Panama has two thirds as many 
people as Paraguay or Jamaica, and, as previ- 
ously stated, one third as many as Cuba, as many 
as Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho combined, or 
is about equal to Utah, Nevada, and Arizona put 
together. 

On the basis of resources and soil and climate 
and accessibility to market, Panama can support 
a population many times her present numbers. 
Her capacity for supporting population from her 
own products is larger than that of most of the 
States of the Union, acre for acre. Panama's 
resources are as good as those of Jamaica or 
Porto Rico or Cuba. On the basis of Jamaican 
population there should be six and one half mil- 
lion people in Panama, and if the number of peo- 
ple per square mile were equal to that of precip- 
itous Porto Rico, we would have a population in 
Panama of ten and one half million, which is 
more than live west of a north and south line 
drawn through Denver, Colorado. 

That no such population lives to-day in Pan- 
ama is due to pohtical causes more than any 
other factor. The population of Porto Rico has 
nearly doubled since American occupation ex- 
changed the old regime for the new. The barren 
deserts of the great Southwest are becoming 
fertile and populous regions because the people 



THE INTERIOR 



99 



who are possessing the land have a fair chance, 
and know that they will be assured a market for 
their produce and security for their lives and 
property. Given pohtical security, monetary 
stabihty, market accessibility, and assurance of 
economic cooperation on the part of the govern- 
ment, there are no immediate limits to the popu- 
lation that Panama may support in comfort. 




SHIPPING COSTA RICA VEGETABLES TO PANAMA 

Political stability for the government of Pan- 
ama is assured by the relations which exist be- 
tween the United States and the Isthmian Re- 
pubhc, a condition which exists in no other Span- 
ish-American repubhc. The proximity of the 
Canal assures a world market. The climate and 
soil and water supply nature has provided with 
lavish hand. Sanitation and hygiene have be- 
come exact sciences, and the matter of retaining 



100 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

good health in the tropics is no longer a problem. 
There is still good land to be had on favorable 
terms, but the supply will soon be controlled by 
monopolists who are seizing the present oppor- 
tunity to load up their future bank accounts, 
while war conditions produce a general depres- 
sion of the world's development forces. 

The present interior population includes three 
distinct classes of people. The original Indian 
stock still exists, pure and often wild, in the high 
mountains and remote regions of the country. 
These Indians are beginning to emerge from 
their fastnesses and get acquainted with their 
neighbors, now that they are sure of police pro- 
tection when they come out. But their number 
is small and they are a negligible factor in the 
totals. 

The West Indians are an importation, and 
while they are easily adapted to the climate and 
form the staple of labor supply for the Canal, 
they are not the Panamanians and never will be 
except as they mix with the native stock and 
shade off the colors that exist in such confusion. 
The Negroes and Panamanians are much more 
distinct in the interior than about the Zone with 
its terminal cities, where the remnants of hu- 
manity have been stirred together for four hun- 
dred years. West Indian populations exist in 
predominance only on the plantations of the 
United Fruit Company, where they supply the 



THE INTERIOR 101 

labor for the operation of these vast enter- 
prises. 

The Panamanian is the predominant man in 
the interior country. He is not black, nor is he 
entirely white, but he has straight hair and fea- 
tures that indicate that he is a descendant of the 
original Indian stock, mixed with the Spanish 
conquerors who overran the country in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Probably the Panamanian has had less oppor- 
tunity for advancement than the people of any 
other country in America. He has had no chance 
for national life or political self-expression. He 
has been the victim of the most vigorous and long- 
continued era of piracy and plunder that the New 
World has experienced. He has suffered from 
bad leadership when he has had any leadership 
at all. He has been exploited by everybody who 
came to the Isthmus. From the days of Morgan 
down to the formation of the present Republic, 
under American protection and guarantee of 
peace within and without, this native has been 
the outcast of the world and the national goat of 
the American flock of nations. He has been 
kept in ignorance and superstition by the exclu- 
sive control of a system of religious oppression 
and subjection, and if by chance he happened to 
acquire anything worth getting, somebody was 
always ready to take it away from him. 

This native supplies the labor for such enter- 



102 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

prises as have been launched in the fertile western 
regions of Panama. With anything like good 
treatment he gives a return for his wages, and if 
he has a chance to acquire sound health, an intel- 
ligent outlook on life, and a share in the results 
of his labors, he can be made over into a good 
citizen. He is not a bad citizen now, but he is 
very much undeveloped. 

The products of this great interior region are 
many and their proceeds in the world's markets 
are profitable. Present prices make large oppor- 
tunities for investment, and a reorganization of 
marketing facilities will mark the beginning of 
an era of prosperity for Panama. The Hst of 
products now being raised in and exported from 
Panama is a surprisingly long one, and the total 
of returns from these commodities would give a 
western real estate promoter material for many 
prospectuses and promises. 

The chief products of the country at present 
are bananas, lumber, rice, sugar, cacao, meat, 
citrus fruits, corn, coffee, and coconuts. But 
there are a hundred other products, many of 
which indicate large returns if produced and 
marketed on a commercial scale. Rubber, ivory, 
nuts, hides, beans, pineapples, potatoes, yams, 
yucca, cotton, tobacco, plantain, a long Hst of 
fruits and vegetables of high value, and a number 
of minerals are but a few of the useful commod- 
ities now being suppHed to the markets of the 



THE INTERIOR 



103 



Canal Zone and the world from the interior coun- 
try of Panama. Nearly every vegetable that 
grows in the temperate climate does well in Pan- 
ama. Some of the native fruits, such as papayas, 
mangoes, and alligator pears, are of delicious 
flavor and high value. The waters of Panama 
abound in vast quantities of 
fish, and there is supply for 
a number of fish canneries. 
Live stock thrives and is pro- 
duced in considerable num- 
bers in the provinces of Code 
and Chiriqui. The Canal 
Zone is now being used as a 
farming enterprise and stock 
grazing range by the admin- 
istration of the Zone with the 
intention of making the Zone 
iarea self-supporting in meat 
^nd fruit and vegetables. 

With an average import 
trade of ten millions and an 
export of more than half that 
amount, Panama is even to- 
day a factor in the world's markets. It must be 
said that the largest item on the import list is that 
of goods shipped to the Zone, and that the chief 
export is bananas shipped from Almirante, but 
these items indicate large possibilities in further 
developments of territories as yet untouched. 




GOOD PINEAPPLES 
GROW HERB " 



104 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

The interior of Panama includes three general 
types of country, very different in climate and 
produce. The high mountains are a large area of 
country, much of which is fertile soil clear to the 
peaks, and all of which on the northern slopes is 
covered with jungle and forest. These wooded 
slopes are wet with abundant rainfall, and luxuri- 
ant fohage of tropical forms bewilders the trav- 
eler with illusions of fantastic creations of nature 
jrun mad over the earth. These mountainous 
parts are for the most part uninhabited, except by 
the more or less wild Indians, who live apart 
much as they were living four hundred years ago. 
No white men have tried to maintain themselves 
in these regions, and in some districts it is said 
that a white man's life is unsafe overnight. Trop- 
ical beasts and reptiles and birds abound among 
the weird forms of vegetation that seem to be per- 
petrating grotesque jokes on the bewildered vis- 
itor to the regions beyond the realm of civilized 
habitations. There are as yet no efforts made to 
establish towns or plantations in this country. 
Yet if cleared and cultivated, these regions are 
.capable of supporting a population as dense as 
that of Porto Hico, where the steep hills and 
rocky peaks are covered with a population of 
,over three hundred per square mile. 

The jungle lands of Panama are elsewhere 
described, and where there is a jungle there are 
always rich land and abundant water, sometimes 



THE INTERIOR 



105 



too much water and need of drainOige. The 
Canal Zone is mainly jungle land, and where it 
has been cleared for cultivation excellent results 
are attained. The cost of clearing this jungle 
is not so great as would appear from the fact that 
for bananas and many other 
forms of crop the trees and 
brush are cut down and after a 
time burned, and no further 
effort is made to clear the land 
except about four cleanings per 
year with a ma- 
chette. Anything 
like plowing is un- 
thought of for ba- 
nanas and some 
other leading cropso 
Even sugar is often \ 
planted and left to 
^hift for itself, 
under native meth- 
ods, which are sub- 
ject, of course, to 
improvement. 

The third class of land in Panama is the level or 
rolhng prairie land known as savanas or llanos. 
These lands lie for the most part in the valleys 
back of Bocas del Toro and along the southern, 
or Pacific, coast of the country. From Chame to 
Cape Mala a belt of level country sweeps around 




'MiiiiiiiiiJii' 

DEAD TIMBER IN GATUN LAKE NOW 
COVERED WITH ORCHIDS 



106 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

the Parita Bay. From ten to forty miles back of 
the coast rise the high mountains, and this fertile 
strip of country averages about thirty miles in 
width and is over a hundred miles long. Rolhng 
country extends on west of this plain, but the 
plain itself contains enough good farming land 
to feed several millions of people. It is watered 
and drained by frequent rivers which cut across 
from the mountains to the sea every three or four 
miles and furnish every facility for cultivation. 
Most of this level country is first-grade soil and 
is adapted to the growing of almost any of the 
products of this tropical land. The general 
appearance of this open country suggests New 
Mexico or Southern California much more than 
any land below the tropic of Cancer. Its numer- 
ous towns and occasional good roads suggest a 
newly opened territory in the west, where there 
are abundant opportunities for growing up with 
the country. The newcomer is apt to be deceived 
into thinking that all things are now ready and 
all he has to do is to move in. 

In the extreme western part of Panama lies 
the great Chiriqui Province with its best-devel- 
oped region in the entire Repubhc. Here are 
great cattle ranches, sugar fields, rice plantings, 
cotton farms, cornfields, and here are American 
companies working to develop modern civilized 
conditions. Here is the Chiriqui Railroad be- 
tween Pedrogal and Boquette, with a branch run- 



THE INTERIOR 107 

ning westward. More interest has centered in 
this region than in any other part of Panama, and 
if the proposed raiboad from Panama to David 
is ever built, the whole southern slope of western 
Panama will suddenly appear on the map of the 
world's granaries. 

Road-building presents no unusual difficulties 
in this region such as confronted the Americans 
in the Philippines when they built the Benguet 
road up from Dagupan. Rainfall is high, but the 
country is comparatively level and well drained, 
and in many of these western provinces a graded 
dirt road has kept in good condition for ten years 
without repairs. During the dry season it is now 
possible to travel by coche over much of this coun- 
try. 

The climate of this interior country is dryer 
and cooler than that of Panama, which lies in the 
jungle area. In the dry season, which is also the 
windy season, and lasts in western Panama from 
mid-December to late in April, health conditions 
are excellent, and with proper precautions they 
are good all the year around. Needless to re- 
mark, the natives take no precautions whatever. 

Good drinking water can be secured by sink- 
ing properly located wells, and this water shows 
freedom from minerals of a deleterious nature. 
There are seaports for coast vessels at almsot 
every river mouth, and roads lead back from these 
to the interior towns. 



108 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

There is a fascination about travel through 
these interiors. But the trip must be made dur- 
ing the dry season. We left a large town one 
morning, paused on a hilltop to take a picture, 
which included a troop of cavalry out on a prac- 
tice march. It was late, and the three of us de- 
parted at good speed, soon outdistancing the sol- 
diers. Two days later a chance traveler informed 
us that the military men were anxious to inter- 
view travelers who had broken the rules with a 
camera and then vanished from sight. We 
passed the encampment on our way back, hung 
about town two hours, and proceeded. That 
night a solitary mounted soldier paused by our 
camp and remarked, "I'll bet you are the fellows 
they are hunting." We suggested that we v/ere 
waiting to be found. Two weeks later, a secret 
service man called and inquired as to our business 
on that trip. Which is to say that Panama's 
interior is a roomy place in which a man might 
easily lose himself or find an empire. A good 
government, an infusion of energy, and a supply 
of capital will make a rich land of nature's great 
virgin farm. 



CHAPTER VIII 
ECONOMIC WASTE 

If it is true that South America is the victim 
of a bad start, it may also be said that Panama is 
the net result of a continuous and consistent fol- 
low-up campaign of wholesale demorahzation 
through a long period of years. 

Beginnings are apt to be determinative, and 
when reenforced by continuous apphcations of 
similar influences, are sure to set a stamp on a 
long period of civilization. Three centuries of 
rule or misrule make a considerable impression 
,on any people. There is something more than 
climate to be taken into account in the search for 
causes of the present conditions in Panama. 

The entire colonial program of Spain differed 
radically from that of the English in Canada or 
the United States in Hawaii or the Philippines. 
The leading motive of the conquistadores was the 
love of gold. Plunder, rapine, and devastation 
followed in the trail of the adventurers who 
fought their way across Panama and conquered 
Peru. Missionary zeal there was, but so mixed 
were the motives of these early heralds of the 
cross that the occasional man of pure and peace- 
ful methods was often supplanted by the monk 

109 



110 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

who used all means that he might make "Chris- 
tians" of men who had no alternative but to be 
baptized or destroyed outright. "Better be dead 
than be damned," thought the energetic priests. 
Never was a dastardly deed wrought by the con- 
queror but there was a priest at hand with heav- 
en's blessing on the crime. If this is doubted, read 
the unchallenged Prescott's Conquest of Peru. 

Spanish colonial policies had small regard for 
the rights or development of the conquered. It 
was one of the viceroys of Mexico who said, "Let 
the people of these dominions learn, once for all, 
that they were born to be silent and obey, and not 
to discuss nor have opinions in political affairs." 

The native village of the far interior country, 
away from the main roads and untouched by up- 
lifting influences, exhibits the situation at its 
worst; but even so, these same villages exhibit a 
better condition than do the wretched Indian huts 
of the high Andes farther south. The population 
of these distant barrios on the Isthmus can hardly 
be classified on distinct lines; every symptom is 
accounted for and every unfavorable trait ex- 
plained by historical factors and social forces that 
have combined to make remote Panama what it 
is to-day. There can be no radical change in 
these conditions until some new program of social 
uphft, educational progress, and spiritual life is 
introduced to cause a fresh reaction and begin a 
new life. 



ECONOMIC WASTE 



111 



The ignorant native bears an intolerable bur- 
den of superstition. His contact with the form 
of church life that exists in these towns is mainly 
expressed in the celebration of occasional fiestas 
and the payment of fees for services rendered, 
and supposed in. some way to benefit the contrib- 




INTERIOR MEAT MARKET 



utor or his dead relatives. If "the test of a reli- 
gion is its results upon a people," then the impar- 
tial observer must draw his own conclusions. 

That these interior towns are intensely con- 
servative is to be expected. How could it be 
otherwise than that the methods of the fathers 
should be good enough for the sons? If human 
progress is not the result of dominant inner forces 
resident in human nature, but comes from the ap- 
plication of external stimuli, then the Pana- 



112 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



manian may have some excuse for his situation, in 
a social history that has afforded httle incentive 
for exercise of enterprise or industry. 

If the far interior of Pan- 
ama is to be judged by pres- 
ent industrial efficiency, the 
case is lost before the trial be- 
gins. General absence of 
everything that marks a high 
grade of living emphasizes 
the failure of the status quo. 
Incompetence, bad manage- 
ment, childishness cry aloud 
from rotting buildings, rust- 
ing machinery, neglected 
plantings, impassable 
"roads," and impossible offi- 
cials. Streets knee-deep in 
mire, mud-floored houses, 
through which pigs wander 
at will, shiftlessness, dirt, in- 
sanitation are the register of 
the wet season in interior 
Panama. The outstanding 




THE FLAVOR OF OLD SPAIN 



church building is often itself 
dirty and disheveled. Sidewalks exist only as 
balconies for individual houses, and vary in height 
at the caprice of the builder, making the middle 
of the street the only convenient highway for the 
passers-by. 



ECONOMIC WASTE 



113 



The bulk of this out-of-the way business is 
handled by the ever-present Chino with his little 
tienda. If there is no Chinese store in the town, 
it is because the town is too poor to support one. 
Business involves effort and industry, both dis- 
tasteful to the native, but 
breath-of-life to the Chinese. 

Inspection of some native 
towns creates the impression 
that everybody just sits 
around all day. Along the 
streets the people lounge the 
idle hours away. Hundreds 
of young men lie about, rock- 
ing in chairs, lying in ham- 
mocks, hanging about cor- 
ners. Women slowly move 
about their household duties, 
but the men are experts at the 
rest cure, and scarcely move 
at all. Once a young man 
gets a pair of shoes and a 
necktie, his industrial career 
abruptly terminates, and 
thenceforth he toils not, neither does he spin, 
has arrived and is content. 

Lack of energy brings inevitable localization 
of all interest and action. Most of the people 
have never been any distance from home and have 
no desire to travel. Travel means exertion of 




TAKING THE REST CURB 



He 



114 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

some kind. I asked a guide to go one day further 
than the first-day trip for which I had hired him, 
and he returned an embarrassed and deprecating 
smile, as if I had asked him to go to the French 
front. It was too far from home. 

It is impossible to get information worth any- 
thing about the country. "How many people live 
in this town?" brings one of two answers. Either 
it is, "I do not know," or it is "Bastante" 
("Plenty"). "How far is it to Los Santos?" 
brings something hke, "Senor, when the sun is 
there [pointing] you set out on your journey, and 
when it is over there, you will arrive." 

We crossed a well-traveled road. 

"Where does this road lead?" 

"To the port, senor." 

"And where does the other end of it go?" 

"To San Pedro, senor." 

"How far is it to the port?" 

"The same distance as to San Pedro." 

"And how far is that?" 

"Bastante lejo, senor" ("Plenty far, sir") . 

Cultivation of crops is unknown. When the 
brush and trees are cleared the stumps are left 
about two feet high; it is easier to do the chop- 
ping at that point than lower down. After the 
fallen growth has sufficiently dried out it is 
burned off and the stumpy field usually planted 
to corn. This corn is allowed to shift for itself 
imtil ripe, and after the stalks have rotted awhile 



ECONOMIC WASTE 



115 



the land may have an apphcation of grass seed 
and be used for pasture, in hope that the stock 
will wear down the stumps until it becomes at 
last possible to perform an athletic feat, called for 
want of a more accurate term, "plowing." I saw 
four oxen all pulling in different directions, while 




THE OXEN STAGE OF AGRICULTURE 

a plow occasionally disturbed the weedy surface 
of the ground and turned up irregular lumps of 
hard soil. The proprietor looked on with pride 
and asked if I had ever plowed. I had. Did I 
plow hke that? I did not. When this plowing 
has been acted out, and some sort of clod-break- 
ing has taken place, sugar cane is planted, and 
the work of cultivation is ended. For a dozen 
years the cane will produce annual crops of more 
or less value without any attention whatever 
other than the cutting of the cane when ready 
for the mill. 

An interior road is an experience. A road is 
a route of travel along which various persons 
make their way as best they are able, under such 
conditions of weather and impassability as hap- 
pen to exist. In the dry season some of these 



116 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

tracks wear down to a condition in which a cart 
can be coaxed over the right-of-way. In wet 
weather nearly all the native thoroughfares are 
wholly impassable except for sturdy oxen, which 
plow their way through the mud and sinkholes 
with deliberation born of long practice. 

The man at the bottom of the scale is not to 
blame for his situation. He is the victim of a 
system that has made it exceedingly unwise for 
him to do anything other than what he does. 

Poverty is the only protection of the people. 
For nearly two centuries pillage, plunder, piracy, 
and murder were the record of the Isthmus. 
Every buccaneer who sailed the Spanish main 
seems to have made a business of taking a chance 
at the Isthmus. It was open season for every 
kind of crook work that the minds of men could 
invent. Most of this activity was confined to the 
trade route in the middle of the Isthmus, but the 
influence and terror of this bloody age extended 
both ways as far as the country was inhabited. 
The common people were exploited, plundered, 
murdered, enslaved, and beaten at every turn. 

Only a fool would work when to work meant 
that his head was marked for immediate oppres- 
sion. If he forgot himself and got hold of any- 
thing of value, some one was ready to take it 
away from him without delay; and if he objected, 
he lost both his property and his head. 

The social dregs that strayed to Panama or 



ECONOMIC WASTE 117 

stayed in Panama in those lurid days were men 
without character, conscience, or capacity for in- 
dustry, other than in their favorite occupation of 
despoihng some one else. 

These pirates and plunderers are gone, but 
they have left their tracks and traces in the civil- 
ization of the Isthmus. The common people to- 
day are mild and submissive ; no other type could 
sm-vive. It is possible to exist in dire poverty 
and pass the time without 
land or property, and that 
is the only kind of exist- 
ence that holds any prom- .^ 
ise of peace to the man at 
the bottom. 

There have been efforts 
on the part of the leaders 
of Isthmian life to inaugu- 
rate a new era and brmg wayside sellers of fruit 
about improvements. 

These efforts have been spasmodic and usually 
complicated by political considerations. Large 
appropriations have been made for roads, pubhc 
buildings, machinery, schools, and mills, but while 
the money has been expended, it has gone like 
water in a sandy desert, and graft and inefficiency 
have swallowed up the funds with little or no 
results. 

It has been supposed that appropriations for 
bridges, public markets, or good roads would in 




118 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



some way take the place of industry and thrift 
and bring good times. Half -finished markets 
rear their ghastly skeletons in town centers. 
Rusting road-rollers stand idle, decaying ma- 
chines lie neglected, and half-finished public 

works are covered with 
cobwebs. Nobody no- 
tices, no one cares, and 
nothing is done. 

A railroad was built 
with the evident idea 
that it would bring pros- 
perity to a section of 
naturally rich country, 
but a railroad without 
crops is useless, and 
crops without labor are 
impossible, and labor 
without adequate re- 
turns is worth still less 
than it costs. The eco- 
nomic structure rests on 
the man at the bottom, 
and when this human foundation is the prey and 
target of every one above him the result can be 
nothing other than general distress and ineffi- 
ciency. 

In some sections of the interior, as in the prov- 
inces of Code and Chitre, meat cattle of good 
quality are raised. Shipping facilities to the 




THE HOUSE BESIDE THE ROAD 



ECONOMIC WASTE 119 

Panama market are very good. There is no 
regular inspection, but the cattle are uniformly 
healthy and in good condition. The cattle-rais- 
ing end of the trade is all right, but the market 
is a different matter. The cattle buyers in 
Panama are organized into what is known as the 
meat trust, and these buyers hold the sellers in 
subjection. Prices are kept down to the lowest 
possible basis, and monopolistic methods so well 
known in North America are in full swing. 

Individual holders of interior ranchos have 
made earnest efforts to produce foodstuffs and 
introduce definite reforms into the methods of 
farming, but such persons have usually served as 
fearful examples to their neighbors. In an in- 
dustrial system in which the one method of the 
man at the top is to keep his eyes open and when- 
ever he finds anyone who has by chance or indus- 
try accumulated something, take it away from 
him — ^this does not stimulate long hours and 
speeding-up on the part of the men who do the 
work. 

When the United States took over the Canal 
Zone and paid the purchase price to the new Re- 
public of Panama, a good appropriation was 
made to the interior provinces for the building of 
a system of highways as the first step in a gen- 
eral improvement of the country. Most of the 
provinces have little to show for this expenditure 
of money. In one province reports were received 



120 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

that the money was being handed out in petty 
grafting operations and for poHtical purposes 
and that no road was being built to speak of. An 
American engineer was sent to investigate. He 
reported the facts and was later put in charge of 
the "work." He reorganized the entire construc- 
tion force, and at the expense of less than twenty 
thousand dollars built a road which has stood 
without repairs for a dozen years, and is in good 
condition to-day under heavy usage. But the 
reorganization pulled down on the engineer's 
head the wrath of the entire officialism of the 
province, and finally the men higher up in author- 
ity denounced the American for upsetting the 
smooth-working system at their expense. He 
had committed the unpardonable error of using 
the money to get results and build the road for 
which it was appropriated. 

This is interior Panama at its worst. There 
are Americans who have invested their money 
and their personal supervision in the develop- 
ment enterprises in Chiriqui, and they are hope- 
ful of better things. There are officials who are 
genuinely anxious to see a better age begin. And 
the day will come when this fair land will make 
men rich by the abundance of its products and the 
certainty of large returns upon development 
work done under favorable conditions. But the 
conditions do not yet exist in any stable form. 

All of this is Panama at its worst, and forms 



ECONOMIC WASTE 121 

but the background of contrast for the picture of 
the fine possibilities that lie in the soil, and in the 
unreleased resources of a human stock that has 
never had a fair chance. Once separated from 
hookworm and superstition, given an industrial 
education, and assured competent leadership and 
certain returns for toil, and the lot of the Pan- 
amanian is no more incurable than that of any 
other victims of a bad system. 



CHAPTER IX 
PANAMA AND PROGRESS 

The coat of arms of the Republic of Panama 
bears the inscription, "The repudiation of war 
and homage to the arts which flourish in peace 
and labor." Under the existing treaty with the 
United States the first part of this excellent 
motto is guaranteed. Panama is a providential 
Republic and presents some of the finest possi- 
bilities of the American tropics. The educated 
Panamanians have not been slow to proclaim 
these rich resources, but no large advance has been 
realized yet. The government of Panama has 
been friendly to promotion plans and develop- 
ment projects, and has undertaken some ambi- 
tious enterprises on its own initiative, but the re- 
sults have been on the whole disappointing. 

American business men who have hved in 
Panama feel that no permanent success can be 
assured to such undertakings without the backing 
of the United States government. The officials 
of Panama naturally do not look with enthusiasm 
upon this idea and prefer to keep development 
enterprises within their own jurisdiction. And 
serious effort has certainly been made by the 
Panamanian government to support some of the 

123 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 123 

enterprises projected by native and foreign cap- 
italists. 

The causes of economic backwardness and so- 
cial conservatism are not difficult to locate and 
describe. From the cruel savagery of Pizarro and 
Balboa to the model communities of the Canal 
Zone is a far step. In the past seventy-five years 
the city of Panama has passed through a thou- 




WIRELESS AT DARIEN 



sand years of social evolution, and in five years 
after Panama became an independent and sov- 
ereign nation the city was transformed, the gov- 
ernment reorganized, and something Hke twen- 
tieth-century conditions replaced the filth and 
disease and squalor of the old days. 

The prowler in social history will find plenty 
of material here. By all the precedents of pro- 
gress Panama should have been prosperous cen- 
turies ago. While other cities of coming metro- 
politan centers were yet barren wastes and sleep- 



124 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

ing wildernesses Panama was on the highway of 
the world. When New York and San Francisco 
and Chicago were inhabited by birds and squir- 
rels Panama was known everywhere. Panama 
had a century the start of all North America and 
was the pawn of kings and the gateway of empire 
before the Pilgrims landed in New England. If 
there be any advantage in an early start, Panama 
should have led us all in the race for a com- 
manding position in the New World. 

There is much in location. A single foot on 
Broadway is worth more than a farm in the des- 
ert. Great cities have great positions on the map, 
and Panama began with a situation to which the 
world simply had to come. A dozen different 
solutions of the transportation problem presented 
by the Isthmian power and navigation were pro- 
posed, but it always came back to Panama. Here 
is the narrowest part of the connecting link of the 
continents, and here is the lowest point in the con- 
tinental backbone. Without lifting her hand or 
voice, Panama had but to dream and wait till the 
world should come and pour into her lap the com- 
merce and progress of the modern age. To-day 
Panama is on the direct line of travel between al- 
most any two great cities at opposite ends of the 
earth. Melbourne and London, New York and 
Buenos Ayres, Port au Spain and Honolulu — 
draw the lines, and they all pass through Panama. 

It is an accepted axiom of unthinking people 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 125 

that gold and prosperity are synonymous. If 
this were true, Panama should be the most pros- 
perous and progressive of all cities of the earth 
to-day. More gold has been carried through her 
streets, and stored in her warehouses, and handled 
by her people, than in any other city of the 
Americas. The Peru of the Conquest was lined 
and lacquered with gold. The palaces of the 
Incas and the Temples of the Sun were plastered 
and burnished with gold; and for a century this 
gold was loaded into European ships, taken to 
Panama and packed across the Isthmus and then 
reshipped to Europe to fill the coffers of profli- 
gate kings and bolster up the fortunes of fallen 
states. All of it came through Panama; and if 
much of it did not remain there, it was not due to 
conscientious scruples on the part qf the Pan- 
amanians. If a stream of gold could bring prog- 
ress, Panama should have led the world for 
three hundred years. 

Probably the modern Repubhc of Panama is 
one of the very few endowed governments in the 
world. The purchase price of the Canal Zone, 
invested in New York real estate, yields an an- 
nual revenue which forms a part of the govern- 
ment budget. The annual payment of $250,000 
by the Canal Zone also helps. Since the begin- 
ning of the French Canal enterprise a consider- 
able part of the monthly payrolls of the Canal 
builders has found its way into the till of the 



126 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



merchants in Colon and Panama, and these 
terminal cities have largely lived on the Canal 
Zone trade. Certainly, Panama has even to-day 
some peculiar financial advantages — and if these 
could bring prosperity, Panama should be pros- 
perous. 

When the California 
gold rush began in 1848 
Panama awoke from 
her century and a half 
of slumber and trouble 
began afresh. Again 
there was gold on the 
Isthmus, and again 
there was crime. Hun- 
dreds of ships dis- 
charged their cargoes 
and passengers on one 
side of the Isthmus, 
and the trip across was 
one not to be forgotten. 
Now that the world 
has once more had to 
fight out the old battle 
of free institutions, it is worth while to remember 
that the oldest independent nation of the modern 
world is Panama ; and that the first of the Span- 
ish colonies to achieve freedom from the misgov- 
ernment of the old country was this same little 
nation on the Isthmus. Tired of the kind of 




FARM GRIST MILL, COSTA RICA 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 127 

supervision which she had been undergoing from 
Europe, in 1826 Panama revolted, set up poht- 
ical housekeeping for herself, until she was later 
merged with the free New Granada — ^the modern 
Colombia. 

If political independence has anything to do 
with advancement, then Panama should be very 
advanced indeed, for she led all her neighbors in 
achieving national separateness. The indepen- 
dence movement that swept over the western 
world a century ago affected Panama pro- 
foundly, and the microbe of political freedom 
soon produced a well-developed case of revolu- 
tion — and the revolution was a success. Four 
score years afterward Panama again established 
her independence without the shedding of a drop 
of blood. If a spirit of independence can make a 
people prosperous, then Panama and prosperity 
should mean the same thing. 

Panama has some peculiar political advantages 
to-day. Where other nations maintain their 
political sovereignty and internal peace at the 
cost of huge sums of money and by means of 
armies and battleships, Panama is spared this 
enormous drain upon her resources and men and 
money, and finds her political independence guar- 
anteed against all the nations of the earth. Like- 
wise she is sure of internal peace and is the only 
really war-tight, revolution-proof country in 
Latin- America. By the treaty entered into be- 



128 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

tween Panama and the United States, in return 
for the Canal Zone and other concessions, the 
United States guarantees the independence of 
Panama and agrees to step in at any time when 
it may be necessary and maintain order through- 
out the Isthmus. The Panamanians are not en- 
thusiastic over this situation, and some of the 
pohticos inwardly resent very bitterly an arrange- 
ment which makes impossible their chosen pro- 
fession of agitators and revolutionary leaders. 

There are people who tell us that the basis of 
national progress is economic and commercial. 
Given a land with all large resources, we shall per- 
force have a progressive people. Measured by 
this standard, Panama should lead all the rest. 
Her thirteen hundred miles of coast bound a 
narrow empire, but an empire of wonderful pos- 
sibiHties. Her inexhaustible soil, her frequent 
rivers, her rich jungles, her broad savanas, her 
high mountains and dense forests, her mines 
and climate and rainfall, and a world market 
right at her doors — all that nature could do to 
lay the foundations of material wealth seems to 
have been done here. 

If so-called modern science and engineering 
skill can bring prosperity, then the Isthmus of 
Panama includes the site of the world's last 
achievement in engineering, sanitation, and or- 
ganized efficiency. Health conditions on the 
Canal Zone are better than in many cities of the 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 129 



United States. General Gorgas said that there 

were three causes for which the Americans left 

Panama in the old days: yellow fever, malaria, 

and cold feet, and that of 

the three the last caused 

more desertions than the 

other two combined. It 

is worth noting that the 

first two mentioned have 

now vanished entirely, 

and it but remains to find 

a preventive for frigid 

pedal extremities to make 

the tropics a white man's 

land. 

Panama and Colon to- 
day are clean and health- 
ful. Even the tropical 
buzzard that hovers over 
every town and crossroad 
in this mid- America 
world has disappeared 
from these cities — starved 
to death. The American 
Board of Health looks 

after the garbage cans and backyards and drains, 
and woe be unto the unhappy mosquito that in- 
advertently wanders into this forbidden territory. 
The entire country is now free from yellow fever, 
and while there is some malaria in the lowlands 




HAPPY KINDERGARTNERS, 
PANAMA 



130 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

during the wet season, health conditions are far 
better than might be supposed. 

The question of climate raises visions of burn- 
ing days and sleepless nights. To people who 
have never hved in the tropics any lurid tale is 
plausible. But these tales of torment do not come 
from dwellers in the tropics, but from overheated 
imaginations of writers of fiction who find the 
tropics a rich field, because most of their readers 
know nothing of the subject. There are more 
comfortable days in Panama, per year, than in 
New York. There is rarely a night when one 
cannot sleep in comfort. If there were nothing 
the matter but the climate, there would be no 
reason for shunning Panama. 

By all the rules of the great game of getting 
rich, Panama ought to be both prosperous and 
progressive. Seemingly every chance has come 
her way. 

Yet the visitor does not find Panama as a 
whole either rich or energetic. The terminal 
cities, Panama and Colon, have lived pretty well 
off the proceeds of the Canal Zone, but the great 
interior country is sparsely inhabited by people 
who are neither prosperous nor progressive. 
Poverty, indolence, and dirt abound throughout 
the provinces. Education is attempted, and the 
present system, when perfected, will afford fairly 
good rudimentary training, but as now conducted 
it is a promise as well as a performance. With a 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 131 



high iUiteracy the people of Panama cannot be 
said to hve on a lofty intellectual plane. Not one 
man in a thousand makes the slightest attempt to 
improve the country, or takes the least interest in 
what the world is doing. 

In the capital city are edu- 
cated and refined men, both 
prosperous and progressive. 
Their activities are divided 
among business enterprises, 
professional callings, and po- 
litical activity. Very few of 
these men are interested in 
development projects to any 
extent. Agriculture as a 
basis of national wealth has 
little place in their thinking, 
unless somebody else can be 
induced to attend to the agri- 
culture while they themselves 
take care of the wealth. 
Working on a farm is all 
right for ignorantes and 
peons, but has no interest for 
a gentleman. The develop- 
ment of natural resources is not interesting unless 
it affords a percentage of some sort, to be earned 
without effort. The unfortunate fact is that 
such modern conditions as exist in Panama to- 
day have largely been brought to her ready-made, 




YOUNG COSTA RICA IS 
ENTERPRISING 



132 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

which may be why she does not take more inter- 
est in them. 

The question of morals and marriage laws is 
one which had better be let alone unless the 
prowler is prepared to find some very unpleasant 
things. All children are baptized, and, as before 
explained, the baptisms are registered and classi- 
fied either as "Legitimo" or "Natural" — ^the 
latter, of course, being illegitimate. Only thirty 
per cent of the births of the Republic as a whole, 
are born of married parents. The reasons for this 
are not so simple as may at first appear. Panama 
has to-day a civil marriage law, but unless a man 
has abundant leisure, endless patience, and can 
afford to hire a lawyer or two, he had better be 
married somewhere else. Evidently, influences 
were brought to bear upon the framers of the civil 
marriage law which induced them to overload it 
with requirements that make it exceedingly un- 
popular. No voice of protest is raised against 
this scandalous moral situation on the part of the 
priests of the established church, who merely 
shrug their shoulders and shake their heads and 
say, "What can you do about it?" Certainly, 
they themselves do nothing at all except to ignore 
the situation. 

There have been physical factors that have 
militated against the progress of Panama. 
While the climate is comfortable, most of the 
time it lacks stimulus. There is no "kick" in it. 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 133 

Without occasional respites in a higher altitude 
and cooler atmosphere, the man from the north 
loses his driving power and his wife sometimes 
gets a case of nerves. Four hundred years of it 
will take the energy out of any man; and many 
of the present inhabitants of interior Panama ap- 
pear to have hved here for about that length of 
time. For the development of high human effi- 




WOODEN SUGAR MILL AND ITS MAKER 



ciency it is required in a climate that it be some- 
thing more than comfortable. It should at times 
be uncomfortable, and occasionally exasperating. 
The workers of the Rockefeller Foundation 
have found eighty per cent of the people of the 
provinces afflicted with hookworm. Highly com- 
mendable is the work done by these representa- 
tives of the Institute, but so long as the conmion 
people know nothing of sanitation, clean and 



134 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

pure food, present conditions will continue. And 
physical "hookworm" is accompanied by a similar 
mental condition. There is a moral hookworm 
throughout the country, and life slumps down to 
a hand-to-mouth drag from one day to the next. 
Both physical and mental conditions are better in 
the cities, of course, but there is still room for a 
moral prophylactic. 

There are social forces which have largely ac- 
counted for this result. Possibly no place in the 
world shows more mixed blood than Panama. 
Shades and colors and tints and tones there are, 
and blends indescribable and also impossible to 
analyze or trace. The artists tell us that the com- 
bination of the primary colors with white results 
in a tint, while blending a primary color with 
black gives a shade. Well, most of these tones 
are shades, for the same scientific reason as that 
mentioned by the artist. From the Caribbean 
world has come its contribution of the West In- 
dian Negroes, with consequent shady result. 

The social results of this mixture are various 
and distressing, but well understood by anyone 
who has lived in the interior of Panama. Even 
the cities are affected in the same way. Social 
standing, political availabihty, and personal in- 
fluence are largely determined by the degree of 
whiteness — or darkness — that prevails in the 
skin. And the general desire of the ignorant and 
unmoral native of the interior to "lighten up the 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 135 

breed" has led to a moral situation that bodes no 
good for the away-from-home white man who 
may be living for a longer or shorter time in the 
up-country provinces. 

Any aggressive North American, especially if 
he be from the West, looks upon the splendid 
areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, 
and the other untouched resources of this rich 
country with amazement, and begins to plan de- 
velopment projects and dream of organizing syn- 
dicates, but the native loses no sleep over such 
vain imaginings. If he dreams at all, it is of his 
food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich. 
Development in the North American sense is a 
disgrace, and no job for a gentleman. The 
smooth savanas may lie there untouched till king- 
dom come, for all he cares. The only interest in 
hfe is political manipulation. Law and politics 
are the two occupations most esteemed, and Pan- 
ama is not different from other countries in the 
frequent association of these two professions. 

Whence comes this emphasis on pohtical activ- 
ity, to the neglect of commerce and agriculture? 
It comes from Europe with the early inheritance 
of the first settlements and rulers of this Latin 
world. For them any form of physical work was 
dire disgrace. "These two hands have never done 
an hour's work" was a boast and badge of qual- 
ity. The chmate of the tropics made this philos- 
ophy of hfe easy to accept and follow, and what 



136 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

the leaders lived the followers did faithfully keep 
and perform. Of course somebody had to do a 
little work and raise a few vegetables and cattle, 
but the game was to find the unfortunate worker 
and then take away from him the product of his 
toil. Thus the getter lived without work and 
taught the loser the uselessness of further exer- 
cise. 

By way of clearness these conditions are here 
described in their worst and final form. Bad as 
they are, they are not the whole truth. It takes 
more than mixed blood and hookworm and snob- 
bishness to account for the present social condi- 
tions of Central America. 

If moral conditions in Panama to-day are not 
ideal, it is not due to any absence of church or 
lack of rehgion. With the explorers and con- 
querors of the sixteenth century came the mis- 
sionaries and priests. Crosses were set up, bells 
were hung, masses were said, and everywhere the 
elaborate ritual of the Spanish church was main- 
tained. Whole villages were "converted," bap- 
tized, and labeled as good Catholics in a day's 
time. Massive and beautiful churches were soon 
built in centers of population, and every village 
has its church, often representing nearly as much 
value as half of the houses of the town combined. 

From the beginning until the coming of the 
North American to finish the Canal the Roman 
Church has had exclusive and uninterrupted oc- 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 137 

cupation of this entire territory. There has been 
no competition, and there have been no interfer- 
ences with her moral and spiritual leadership. 

But in spite of this situation, or perhaps be- 
cause of it, moral conditions are what they are in 
Panama to-day. Out of the closed Bible and the 
bound consciences of this system have come social 
incapacity and intellectual helplessness in all the 
fields of human activity. Most of Latin- America 




PUBLIC MARKET, DAVID 



has not yet learned that the intellect, like the 
nation, cannot exist half slave and half free. 
Only free consciences can guide free citizens to 
the founding of free political institutions and 
social activities. A successful democracy can 
never be reared upon a foundation of superstition 
and spiritual despotism. More than all other 
factors this moral blight and spiritual dry-rot is 
what is the matter with Panama. The moral and 
spiritual climate of a people has more to do with 
the growth or destruction of a spirit of progress 



138 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

than do thermometers and telephones and de- 
clarations of independence. Until the spirit of a 
Panamanian becomes a free spirit and he is per- 
mitted to think and worship after the dictates of 
a free conscience, Panama can never become a 
progressive nation. 

Highly favored among the nations of the earth, 
this little country affords a strategic opportunity 
for the setting up of a national experiment in 
development and progress. If this undertaking 
is to succeed, there must be added to the large 
economic, social, and strategic resources of the 
country the element of a free spirit and an en- 
lightened conscience. Out of these will come a 
sense of the dignity of labor, the worth-whileness 
of education, and the development of the now 
dormant resources of this beautiful land. 

The problem of progress in Panama is inevit- 
ably linked with that of Protestantism. Work 
was begun by the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in Colon under Bishop William Taylor, and a 
strong West Indian congregation was gathered. 
This was later turned over to the Wesleyan 
Methodists, who maintain considerable work 
among the West Indians of the Caribbean 
Islands. With the purchase of the Canal Zone 
by the United States, the Methodists began to 
plan for work in Panama and eventually estab- 
lished a Spanish church and school at the head 
of Central Avenue, opposite the national palace. 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 139 

But no serious effort was made by this denomina- 
tion to meet and master the problems that arose 
from exclusive Protestant occupation of the 
Spanish-speaking section of the field until the 
time of the noted Panama Congress in February, 
1916. Here met representatives of the Protes- 
tant movement in all Latin- America, and general 
principles of comity and cooperation were estab- 
lished and adopted. Under this working agree- 
ment, the Spanish work in the Republic of Pan- 
ama was assigned to the Methodists as a unit of 
responsibility. To this area Costa Rica was later 
added. West Indian work was not included in 
this survey, and it is to be hoped that some similar 
representative and authoritative body may yet 
undertake to bring order and comity out of the 
unorganized, though friendly, confusion of West 
Indian denominational programs now existent. 

The Pan-Denominational Congress of 1916 
made definite the responsibility for Spanish work 
in Panama, and the denomination now in charge 
of this field is working on a program somewhat 
adequate to the strategic importance of the very 
conspicuous location beside the Canal Zone. 
When fully realized and in operation, this pro- 
gram of work will wield a wide influence in the 
Spanish- American world. A large factor in this 
new program has been the interest and enthusi- 
asm of the young people of the California Con- 
ference Epworth League, who have done much 



140 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

to make possible an enlargement of the work 
undertaken. 

Too much praise cannot be given to the earnest 
and efficient missionaries who founded and have 
maintained this mission. The Seawall Church 
has abeady sent out its influences to the ends of 
the earth. The standards and results attained in 
Panama College, so far as that institution has 
been developed, have exerted a strong influence 
on the educational and moral life of the city and 
of the republic. The work in 1919 included a 
Spanish base at the Seawall location, with its 
church and school, and American congregation, 
a West Indian school and church in Guachapali, 
a Spanish mission Sunday school and evangelistic 
service in the school building kindly loaned by the 
Wesleyans, a Spanish mission school and preach- 
ing service in Guachapali, a West Indian Sun- 
day school and service at Red Tank, and a 
Chinese mission near the market. Present plans 
for future expansion include, in addition to the 
work now under way at David, an adequate pro- 
gram of interior education and evangelization, an 
industrial and agricultural school, a strong insti- 
tution church in Panama, an institution of higher 
education, and adequate work in Colon. 

This mission shares with the Northern Baptist 
Convention and the Northern Presbyterian 
Church denominational responsibility for most 
of Central America. The Baptists have work in 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 141 

Honduras, Salvador, and the Presbyterians in 
Guatemala and in Colombia, further south. The 
Methodists complete the chain by the occupation 
of Panama and Costa Rica, in which latter re- 
public work was begun in the latter months of 
1917. Costa Rica presents an attractive field 
with its good climate, fertile country, Spanish- 
speaking population of intelhgence, and large 
capacity for progress. The new mission met with 
success from the start and promises rapid growth. 

The three denominations named are working 
together in complete harmony and have devel- 
oped a unified program of Christian education 
for Central America, as the beginnings of further 
coordination of effort. There is no overlapping, 
no competition, and, above all, no overcrowding, 
in this promising but sparsely occupied field. 
The Protestant denominational front on this field 
is well unified. 

There are several independent missions work- 
ing in this field, some of which do not find it in 
their purposes to unite in any general movement, 
and none of which place emphasis on education. 
Chief among these is the Central America Mis- 
sion which maintains workers in all the republics 
of Central America who confine themselves 
largely to evangelistic effort. 

All of the Central republics have constitutional 
religious liberty, and the work of Protestantism 
is officially welcome everywhere. Of petty perse- 



142 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

cutions and ecclesiastical opposition there are 
numerous examples. The spirit of the Inquisi- 
tion still smolders beneath the surface, but the 
new spirit of world- democracy makes more and 
more grotesque and futile the intolerance and 
bigotry of the Dark Ages. 

Protestantism in Latin- America has been in 
the van of every movement toward progress and 
has contributed much toward the foundations of 
the new era. Without the Protestant movement, 
the present state of advance would be impossible. 
To-day Protestantism is in the anomalous posi- 
tion of being inadequate in equipment and man- 
power to meet the situation created or to supply 
the demands arising everywhere for adequate ex- 
pression of free institutions. The Imnp is large 
and the leaven has been small, but the contagion 
pf liberty and the awakening of conscience de- 
mand an adequate equipment and program. 

There is promise of a new and worthy ap- 
proach in the large purposes of the great de- 
nominations to undertake in adequate manner a 
program of world-reconstruction made impera- 
tive by the close of the great war. The collapse 
of all but moral and spiritual forces as a guar- 
antee of peace renders all former ahgnments 
obsolete and forces the church to new methods 
and more comprehensive undertakings. It is now 
resolved to go up and possess this goodly land 
on the mere borders of which we have lingered for 



PANAMA AND PROGRESS 143 

nearly a century. The coming generation will 
Bee a reorganization and reconstruction of the 
Protestant program in Latin- America, and be- 
fore the end of the twentieth century this mighty 
continent will have attained a noble citizenship in 
the neighborhood of great races. 



CHAPTER X 
KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 

Whatever the cause or results, the fact stands 
that we are not well acquainted with our nearest 
national neighbors. Like the modern city-dwell- 
er, we know least about those who live nearest. 
The North American knows more about the other 
side of the world than he does about those who 
live on the same continent with him. Neither the 
North American nor his southern neighbor has 
treated the other fairly. 

Many of us have not yet discovered that there 
be any Latin- American. Some one lives south of 
the Hne, of course, but that fact has made httle 
impression on our minds. In our mental geog- 
raphy the American world shades off into a hazy 
and troubled region southward about which we 
have known little and cared less. Our geograph- 
ical studies have helped us but little. It is pos- 
sible to know every physical fact about a country 
without knowing the hearts of the people. 

It is an anomaly that we know less about our 
Latin neighbors than we do of Europe or Asia. 
By historical ties and constant reminders of com- 
merce and immigration we are aware of our trans- 
atlantic cousins. We have discovered the Far 

144 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 145 



East and have some interest therein, even though 
it be the interest pertaining to a museum or a 
menagerie. But until very recently neither im- 
migration, commerce, nor curiosity has stirred us 
to acquaintance with our 
continental neighbors. 

This ignorance is part of 
our general antebellum atti- 
tude toward all the world 
lying south and east. In 
fact, we never bothered 
much with anybody outside 
of the United States. Over 
a century we lived on, secure 
in the idea that we were im- 
mune from European mih- 
taristic contagion and all- 
sufficient unto ourselves. 
The rest of the world might 
perchance sink into the sea, 
but we would go on bhss- 
fuUy without it. Our "free 
institutions" were self-suffi- 
cient and all-inclusive. And 
because we were able to 
troubles and keep out of other peoples' quarrels, 
more or less, we assumed that we were automat- 
ically superior to the rest of the world, "of 
course." 

We of the United States have been likened 




INDIAN BOY GOES TO 
SCHOOL 



compose our own 



146 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

unto a householder Hving on a plot of ground 
rich enough to support his family. Resolving not 
to become entangled in neighborhood alliances, 
he constructed a hundred-foot wall about his 
property and lived securely within. The right- 
hand neighbor might be an anarchist and the man 
on the left a cannibal. If the man in the rear 
were a polygamist and the dweller across the 
street had a habit of using firearms indiscrimi- 
nately it mattered nothing to the householder — so 
long as the wall held. But it came to pass that 
an earthquake destroyed that wall, and the said 
exclusive citizen suddenly found himself out on 
the street with his neighbors. And behold, it 
mattered much what sort of neighbors they were. 
There was nothing to do but get acquainted and 
help make the neighborhood a decent place in 
which to live. 

Since the world war has battered down the wall 
with which we sought to separate ourselves from 
other nations, we have nothing left but to recog- 
nize and accept our place in the national neigh- 
borhood and do our share to make it decent. 

The Latin- American has been at a disadvan- 
tage in the character of the continent in which he 
lives. South America is a land for promoters, or- 
ganizers of industry, hardy pioneers of produc- 
tion, engineers, planters, and rugged explorers of 
commercial frontiers. The poetic and artistic 
temperament of the Latin has suffered an unfair 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 147 



criticism because of the ill adaptation of his tem- 
perament to his environment. Sunny Italy and 
picturesque France and vine-clad Spain were 
more to his tastes and abilities. That he has done 
as well as he has speaks much for his adaptabihty 
to a situation better suited to a 
more executive type of char- 
acter. Give him a chance in his 
own best environment and he 
shows capacity of high achieve- 
ment. 

Probably the two most arro- 
gant travelers have been the 
Englishman and the American, 
but our British cousins have as- 
sumed their superiority with 
silent contempt, while the newly 
rich American globe-trotters 
have vaunted their ignorance 
from the piazzas of every tour- 
ist hotel and upon the steamer 



\ 



'^\\s' 



WASHDAY IN COSTA EICA 



148 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

decks of every sea. It is really not strange that 
we failed to notice the very considerable and im- 
portant populations of countries lying at our 
doors. 

The North Americans are not travelers. Few 
of us do go anywhere, and fewer still know how 
to travel successfully. The poorest traveler in 
the world is the society tourist who goes about 
trying to reproduce home conditions in a foreign 
land. So far as possible he escapes the hfe and 
message of the country in which he sojourns and 
returns with little else but tales of social func- 
tions, a la American, and comparative accounts 
of expenses at tourist hotels. From the first day 
out he isolates and fortifies himself against the 
very things that travel alone can give. He brings 
home a few trinkets made to sell, some cocksure 
criticisms of customs, people, and missionaries, 
and a swelled head. But he has been abroad — 
save the mark ! 

Travel is a specific for provincialism, but it 
must be real travel and not imitation home- 
swagger. Intelligent and sympathetic travel 
breaks up the hardening strata of thought, pushes 
back the narrowing horizon, loosens the set fibers 
of the soul, and is the surest cure yet known for 
mental arterial sclerosis. The right kind of travel 
shifts the viewpoint, readjusts life forces, and 
shakes up the provinciahsm of the man with the 
"township horizon." And when the disturbed 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 149 

atoms of character reassemble it is in a different 
mode and with a new cycle. 

It is to be said that the South American has 
not taken much interest in us. Since he has made 
out to get along without us, he cannot be very 
important. The Oriental has shown some desire 
to move into our basement, or at least the wood- 
shed or the washhouse, and we have discovered 
him. The European has shown his good taste by 
coming over and moving right in with us, and in 
time we cannot distinguish him from ourselves. 
But the South American has gone his way, and 
in the main has minded his own affairs, and there- 
fore cannot amount to much. If he were a social 
problem, we would know him better. If he had a 
penchant for the police force or an itch for office 
among us, we would cultivate his acquaintance, 
and perhaps invite him to call. 

During the past two decades the once despised 
Chinese have become popular among us. Their 
utter difference from ourselves, their solid human 
qualities, their marvelous vitality, their commer- 
cial solidarity, their response to the stimuh of the 
modern world, their astonishing versatihty, their 
wonderful national history — ^these and a hundred 
other things stir our imagination, and we have 
rather suddenly discovered that we like the 
Chinese — especially at a distance. 

We are well aware of Japan, not so much 
through any perceptions of our own as through 



150 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Japan's insistence upon attention. We can on 
short notice make out a rather comprehensive hst 
of Japanese characteristics, and, in truth, we find 
Japan interesting. The marvelous energy of her 
people, her high ambitions, her Oriental view- 
point, her great commercial and military suc- 
cesses, her artistic setting, her marvelous skill of 
hand, and, not least, her abundant interest in our 
own affairs — ^these and other items make it quite 
the thing to be interested in Japan. But who 
cares anything about a lot of dirty peons? They 
are not in good form. 

But this interest in the Orient is more curiosity 
than it is race sympathy. There is a great gulf 
fixed between the yellow man and the white, and 
racially that gulf can never be bridged. The oc- 
casional marriages between the East and West 
need no comment; they tell their own story. 
Neither China nor Japan can ever become Amer- 
ican in any racial sense. When Chinese and Jap- 
anese come to America for any but educational 
and temporary purposes, they set up Chinatown 
and Httle Japan wherever they go. American 
character is a most compHcated composite of 
many races, but from Tokyo to Bombay there is 
no Oriental factor that will blend with the mix- 
ture of races that makes up America. 

Our Oriental interest is confined to the races 
that have impressed themselves upon our imagi- 
nation. The PhiHppines, in spite of our national 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 151 

relation to the islands, do not seem to us very real 
nor very important. They will soon be keeping 
house for themselves, and then we shall forget 
them except as an interesting historical incident. 
And as for India, that is British, and about all we 
know is that the Hindu wears a turban, main- 
tains a very undemocratic caste, exists in unac- 
countable numbers, is subject to annoying and 



% ^. 




RIVERSIDE PLANTATION 



frequent famines, and on the whole is a rather 
helpless lot, except as some bearded fakir enter- 
tains companies of badly balanced American so- 
ciety women with hyperbolated essence of sub- 
limated nonsense. 

But the Latin- American is blood of our blood, 
kin of our kind, and hves on the same continental 
street, which is why we are so little interested in 
him. He is neither quaint, curious, nor crazy. 
He is not good for first-page headlines except 



152 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

when he breaks out in revolution or forgets our 
Monroe Doctrine. There is no fixed gulf of dif- 
ference between him and us, and in the final fus- 
ing of American character he must contribute a 
large part. 

To ignore the Latin- American is to be con- 
victed of historical ignorance. From Dante to 
the great South American leaders and scholars of 
to-day the Latin races have been neither sleeping 
nor idle. During the last five hundred years 
more than one half of Western history has been 
made by Latin races. It was a Latin who dis- 
covered America. Another first sailed around 
the globe. Latin peoples explored, conquered, 
and settled both Western continents, and gave a 
language which has become the permanent speech 
of two thirds of the Western world. To call the 
roll of artists, painters, sculptors, poets, drama- 
tists, novehsts, musicians, explorers, missionaries, 
and scientists for the past five centuries is to prove 
that a majority of the names mentioned in the 
world's illustrious hall of fame are from Latin 
races. To mention Cure, Pasteur, and Marconi 
is to remind us of the scientific progress of mod- 
ern Latin minds, and to speak of France and 
Italy as pioneers in democracy is to keep within 
the facts. It was in Italy that Browning and 
Tennyson and George Eliot and a host of other 
writers found inspiration and material to feed the 
fires of genius. 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 153 

Whatever may be said of the modern degener- 
acy of the dominant rehgious system of Latin- 
American countries, it is true that the sixteenth 
century saw in Spain one of the most virile and 
comprehensive missionary movements of all his- 
tory. Never before nor since have missionary 
efforts been projected on so vast a scale or by 
so powerful procedure. Monks and priests went 
out and established the cross and the confessional 
through the Western world and in the islands of 
the sea, and, whatever else we may say, there can 
be no disparagement of the permanency of the 
results of these conquests. The Latin world is 
still dominantly Roman in its religious life, and 
shows very positive preferences for the religion of 
the conquistadores. To give a language and a 
rehgion to two thirds of the American conti- 
nents is not the work of weakhngs nor of degener- 
ates. 

This Latin neighbor of ours not only lives on 
the same street but he lives in a bigger and better 
house than ours. To the "lick-all-creation" type 
of Fourth-of-July American this is rank heresy, 
but facts have httle regard for fireworks. With 
twenty-eight per cent of the population of the 
Americas, the Latin holds sixty-five per cent of 
the territory and fully the same proportion of 
natural resources. His soil, his rivers, his moun- 
tains, his harbors, his mines are as good as ours, 
and he has more of them. In the western hemi- 



154 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



sphere he controls the longest rivers, the highest 

mountains, the largest area of 
habitable land, the longest sea- 
coast, and the entire inex- 
haustible fertility of the trop- 
ics. His untouched and un- 
charted natural resources are 
beyond computation. His 
estate is second to none in the 
entire world, and he could 
spare enough for the crowded 
millions of India or the 
swarming islands of Japan 
and never miss it. All of this 
we would have discovered 
sooner but for the world war, 
which focused all attention on 
the main issue and postponed 
the direct results of the suc- 
cessful completion of the 
Panama Canal. With a 
normal supply of shipping, 
the west coast alone of 
South America would keep 
the Canal busy much of the 
time and affect American 
markets profoundly. 
In material achieve- 
ments om- neighbor has not been idle, though 
some of his attempts have resulted in failure or 




JUNGLE PRODUCTS 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 155 

fiasco. He has built great and beautiful cities, he 
has constructed long and difficult railroads over 
tortuous mountain systems, he has developed 
huge industries and organized big commercial 
enterprises. He has produced a civilization in 
keeping with his character, artistic, homogeneous, 
progressive, and on a high intellectual plane. 
His libraries, theaters, and public buildings are a 
credit to his taste and skill, and his churches are 
massive and stately as the rock-ribbed mountains 
that tie together the whole system from El Paso 
to Patagonia. 

We have heard more or less of a Pan- Amer- 
icanism, but we have never taken it seriously. As 
subject for diplomatic papers, magazine articles, 
and after-dinner oratory the all- America idea has 
been a refuge of word- venders. But so long as 
the bulk of South American trade was with 
Europe our brand of fraternal talk was harmless 
— also helpless ; and the reason for our failure to 
do business with South America has not been 
entirely the neglect of our shippers. The larger 
exports of South America have all been to 
Europe, and with ships loaded both ways the 
American exporter was hopelessly handicapped 
in his effort to secure favorable freight rates. 
When American salesmen tried to compete with 
German and French and Spanish exporters they 
always failed to secure freight rates that gave 
them an even chance. 



156 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

For years American manufacturers ignored the 
Orient and lagged far behind European dealers 
in the same class of goods, to their own large loss. 
The same neglect has produced the same result in 
South America. Germany pursued a very dif- 
ferent policy. Without trumpet or flag Ger- 
many sent her agents to practically every Latin- 
American center and seaport, and there the unos- 
tentatious German proceeded to control as much 
business as possible, and generally get hold of the 
situation. Often he took unto himself a wife of 
the country, but never for one day did he forget 
that he was a representative of the Vaterland. 
His house, his furniture, his methods, his ideas 
were one hundred per cent German. An Amer- 
ican ship doctor went ashore from a German hner 
in a small South American seaport and stumbled 
upon the inevitable German man of business. 
He was invited home to dinner and shown 
through the house with much pride by the half- 
German children. One after the other, furniture, 
books, pictures, clothing even were exhibited and 
with every article was repeated the formula, "Es 
war in Deutschland gemacht." It was a great 
game, and it was working along smoothly until 
things shpped in Europe, and now the end no 
man can see. But there is going to be a great 
chance for American capital and enterprise and 
business energy in the years when German energy 
will be needed at home. 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 157 

In one of the Central American republics an 
American, while present at a social function, re- 
marked casually to a friend that in his opinion 
the cure for the political upheavals of that coun- 
try would be in the polite but firm intervention 
of the United States. A German business man, 
overhearing the remark, hastily interposed, "Not 
at all, sir ; that is what Germany is in this country 
for." With a concerted and well-considered 
policy of business extension in South American 
countries Germany deserved the commercial ad- 
vantages that she had gained in the twenty-five 
years preceding the war period. 

When questioned as to the remarkable success 
of the German commercial propaganda. South 
American leaders rarely fail to mention the fact 
that the German business man in Latin lands in- 
variably speak the language of the country. 
Catalogues are issued in Spanish or Portuguese, 
as local conditions require. Measures, technical 
terms, and methods of handling goods are all 
adapted to local usage, and the South American 
merchant is considered and consulted in all the 
mechanism of exchange and handling of goods. 
Contrasted with North American ignorance of 
conditions and ignoring of language and custom, 
it is not strange that Europe has controlled the 
trade of Latin- America. 

In view of all that is involved of national de- 
velopment, international entanglements, commer- 



158 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

cial expansion, and racial affinity, it would seem 
to be about time that we become acquainted with 
our neighbors, or, rather, in our neighborhood. 
If we are going to live on this great American 
highway, it may be well to be on good terms with 
the rest of the folks. 

Aside from commercial and linguistic consider- 
ations, there are four reasons for our ignorance 
of the lands and people south of the United 
States. 

1. The American people are not well ac- 
quainted with any other people on earth. Geo- 
graphical isolation has had much to do with this, 
and racial self-sufficiency has had still more effect 
upon our lack-of-thinking about our neighbors. 
Had South and Central American countries been 
pouring millions of immigrants into our cities, we 
would know something about them, but the Latin 
has had no need to immigrate, since he has more 
room in his own house than he could find in ours. 

2. American travel abroad has been practically 
all to Europe, with an increasing number who 
have seen something of the Far East. And it is 
impossible to be anything but densely ignorant of 
any people whose faces we have never seen, whose 
country we have never visited, whose history we 
have ignored, and whose language we cannot un- 
derstand. No real interest is possible without 
knowledge, and the main trouble between the 
American and his neighbors is plain ignorance. 



KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS 159 

3. The war with Spain in 1898 resulted in much 
indifferent prejudice on our part against every- 
thing Spanish. Spain was not prepared for the 
blow that fell upon her, and perhaps her colonial 
system deserved the destruction that was admin- 
istered, but we came out of the war with a more 
or less good-natured contempt for anything and 
everything that savored of Spain. We escaped 
with little or no spirit of hatred or lust of con- 
quest, but we marked down the Latin world at 
bargain prices — and then let Europe walk away 
with the bargain. As a matter of fact, Spain has 
little to do with the American situation. Spain 
herself in the past fifteen years has made rapid 
strides forward, but in the average American 
mind anything Spanish cannot be very efficient. 

4. Our Monroe Doctrine has begotten a certain 
arrogance of attitude toward all our southern 
neighbors. Our attention has been called south- 
ward only when revolution or anarchy or Euro- 
pean interference has compelled us to take a 
hand for our own ultimate self -protection. It is 
only when our neighbors have failed to keep the 
peace and have threatened to carry their quarrels 
into our yard, or have been in danger of being 
beaten up by European military police, that we 
have taken the trouble to notice them. From this 
situation it was inevitable that an attitude of pat- 
ronage should arise, and patronage is not a basis 
of national cooperation or mutual understanding. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE FAMILY TREE 

When came this Latin- American? Is he a 
mystery, a complex, or a racial conundrum defy- 
ing analysis and baffling understanding? So 
many people have said. Others have reported a 
something impossible to name or describe about 
this man from the southlands — all of which is 
nonsense. There are few human mysteries when 
once we have the key. Any people may be under- 
stood if we know their racial origin, social history, 
and reaction-power. Such knowledge usually 
explains these so-called race peculiarities. 

As North Americans we are ourselves the pres- 
ent product of social forces that have driven us 
for centuries past. With a northern European 
race origin we have been mixed in many molds 
and infused with many tinctures till we emerge 
a new blend of blood. This new and vigorous 
stock shows a reaction-power that has made much 
of educational, scientific, and material opportu- 
nities, but, after all, these traits themselves are 
largely the result of the social stimuli of the past 
five hundred years. Had our ancestors in the 
sixteenth century removed to Spain, we should 
all now be Spanish dons. 

160 



THE FAMILY TREE 



161 



If we could know the social, religious, intellec- 
tual, domestic, industrial, and political environ- 
ment of a people, we could account for ninety per 
cent of race characteristics. And this social his- 
tory measures, not only potent forces and com- 
pelling sanctions, but itself in turn registers re- 
active power and character values. 

The Latin- American has 
no cause to apologize nor ex- 
plain when we inquire into 
his racial antecedents. Out 
of the remote ages of antiq- 
uity a branch of the human 
family moved westward, 
and on the Italian peninsula 
developed a civilization and 
founded a city that in time 
dominated the world. The 
lust of conquest and the in- 
toxication of power de- 
bauched the rulers of Rome, but the rising Chris- 
tian Church took over the scepter, and for fifteen 
hundred years Rome dominated the civilization of 
the world. Fundamentally, there was no differ- 
ence between the blood of southern and western 
Europe, and but for the corrupt and demoraliz- 
ing influence of the papacy and its trailing blight 
upon the human spirit Rome might still have 
been the dominant power of European civiliza- 
tion. The abuses that compelled the Reformation 




SAN BLAS INDIAN CHIEF 



162 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



also vitiated the Latin spirit. The wakening 
life of the sixteenth century shifted the center 

westward but the bhght of 
papal despotism kept the 
Latin races from their full 
share in the developments 
and democracy of the modern 
age. And now that the Teu- 
tonic peoples of the north 
have become the victims of 
the most deadly despotism 
that the world has yet pro- 
duced, it is possible that the 
center and motive of progres- 
sive thought in continental 
Europe may again swing to 
the southern peoples. 

No one can trace the 
splendid march of the Latin 
races through the conquests 
and explorations and discov- 
eries of the later fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries and then 
read the record of achieve- 
ments down to the present 
time and still maintain that 
there is anything decadent 
about the Latin races. Had the Roman yoke 
been broken from the Latin neck as it was 
from the Teuton, we should have had a very dif- 




« \ ■» 



NO RACE SUICIDE HERE 



THE FAMILY TREE 163 

ferent tale to tell, and the dominant civilization 
of the twentieth century might have been Latin 
instead of Saxon. 

A closer examination of the social factors that 
have dominated the Latin- American world and 
produced the present composite result on the 
western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors 
that have in combination produced our neighbors. 

All Latin- America reflects a European back- 
ground. Nearly all relations of life are defined in 
European terms. Out of the more or less subcon- 
scious inheritance and ideals of European origin 
arise the sanctions of social relations. Ideals of 
pontics, business, education, home life, social cus- 
toms, and rehgion all come from this fountain of 
associations. The church in South America is the 
church in southern Europe. The collegio is not 
the North American college, but the European 
school which grants a Bachelor of Arts degree 
at what corresponds to the end of the freshman 
year in an American college. South American 
"republics" have their "prime ministers," and 
the electorate is on the European basis. The 
presidents of some of these republics exercise 
more arbitrary power than the king of Eng- 
land or the entire executive of the United States. 
They are European "presidents." Revolution is 
not the incurable habit of the "people" but the 
profession of a few adventurers who oppress 
and afflict the long-suffering and usually silent 



164 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



populace. This is not saying that revolution 
is a characteristic of European political pro- 
cedure, but that the forms of reresentative gov- 
ernment imposed upon the ideals of dictatorship 
and monarchy produced the curious mixture of 
revolutionary political progress known as a South 
or Central American "republic." South Amer- 
ican democracy is a hybrid 
product of European ideals 
and American forms of gov- 
ernment. Naturally enough, 
it is neither one thing nor the 
other, and will not be any- 
thing very different until new 
forces are brought to bear 
upon the political life of the 
Latin people. 

A second factor in the 
making of the Latin- Amer- 
ican is his isolation for three 
hundred years from the cur- 
rents of Western economic 
and political life. Practically all our North 
American stock of ideas and social sanctions 
has been developed since the Pilgrims landed 
in New England. The great basic impulse 
that sent men and women westward in search 
of religious liberty has persisted and widened 
and developed a homogeneous system of poht- 
ical ideal that has become the unquestioned 




JUNGLE GUIDE 



THE FAMILY TREE 



165 



background of our whole political system. From 
free consciences have come free institutions, free 
schools, free votes, and as long as it lasted, free 
land, unrestricted economic opportunity, and a 
welcome to the world. Upon 
this foundation have been 
reared American indepen- 
dence, modern democracy, 
higher education, the femin- 
ist movement, scientific ad- 
vance, and American Protes- 
tantism. 

Certain influences from 
this stream have affected 
Latin-American life. The 
nomenclature of South 
American politics is that of 
the United States, and many 
constitutions contain provi- 
sion for every modern prac- 
tice. But these model con- 
stitutions are like a beautiful 
and costly piano imported 
into a home where no one 
knows how to use it. It takes 
a democratic spirit to get democracy out of a 
democratic constitution. The best piano yields 
only discord, and the most advanced constitution 
does not prevent revolution if there be no musi- 
cians or statesmen to play and administer. Peo- 




ONE USE FOE A HEAD 



166 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

pie living beside the stream of democratic pro- 
gress have caught the names and forms drifting 
on the current, but only those people have ad- 
vanced with the current who have not been tied 
to the shore by moral and intellectual despotism. 

The influence of geographical nearness is slight 
beside that of historical background and social 
relations. Mexico is much closer to Spain than to 
the United States. After twenty years of suc- 
cessful administration of the Philippines on the 
most colossal scale of national benevolence that 
the world has ever seen, nearly all the Filipinos 
who had reached maturity in 1898 are still Span- 
ish at heart and out of sympathy with American 
ideals and administration. If the United States 
can hold the islands until every person who was 
ten years old or over in 1898 is thoroughly dead 
and safely buried, there will be a chance for some 
form of democracy, but the old-time leaders will 
retain so long as they live the ideals derived from 
three hundred years of Spanish administration. 

If there are in the mountains of the South iso- 
lated neighborhoods that have been passed by in 
the current of modern American progress, and 
are to-day practically ignorant of all that makes 
up American life, even though surrounded on all 
sides by the march of a virile and restless race, 
what must be the results of the isolation from this 
stream of North American development, of the 
whole Latin- American race, while maintaining 



THE FAMILY TREE 



167 



close and vital connections with European stand- 
ards and ideals ? 

But Latin American- 
ism can never be ex- 
plained merely by its 
European background 
and its isolation from the 
progress of North Amer- 
ica. The keynote to the 
present product in Latin 
lands is to be found in 
that system of religious 
despotism that has 
checked the free growth 
of every people whose hf e 
it has dominated. 

Jesuitism is what is the 
matter with the civiliza- 
tion southward. We have 
had Romanism and Jesu- 
itism in the United States, 
but people who have 
never seen any form of 
these forces except that 
which has developed in 
the free air of North 
America have much to 
learn. Romanism checked 
and balanced by a virile Protestantism and a 
democratic political life is an altogether differ- 




BEGGARS AND CATHEDRALS 



168 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

ent institution from Romanism dominant, degen- 
erate, and intolerant. The latter becomes the 
religion of the bound Bible, the chained spirit, 
and the crippled conscience. It is the center of 
spiritual infection and the microbe of moral weak- 
ness. No land has ever advanced under its lead- 
ership. Like a blight on the human spirit, it has 
cast its spell of ignorance and superstition over 
the milhons of men and women who have had no 
other ethical code or spiritual leadership. 

It has been claimed that the rigors of New 
England winters had something to do with the 
sturdy New England conscience. But the Pil- 
grims brought their consciences with them, and 
the climate came near exterminating the colony. 
If the Pilgrims had landed in Cuba and the 
Spanish in Boston, civilization might be very dif- 
ferent to-day. If rigorous climates produce vig- 
orous men, how is it that some of the most terrible 
of men sailed the Caribbean sea and devastated 
the whole mid- American world, while the north- 
ern coasts of the Atlantic never saw a pirate's 
sail ? The tropical zephyrs of the Bay of Panama 
never softened the tempers or dispositions of the 
bloodthirsty men who came near exterminating 
whole populations and left a trail of blood and 
terror behind them. And these same uncon- 
scionable scoundrels used to attend mass and 
plant wooden crosses wherever they went. 

The effort to account for South American civ- 



THE FAMILY TREE 



169 



ilization by climate falls to pieces before the 
splendid and bracing altitudes of the Andes, the 
ideal conditions of Argentine, Uruguay, and 
Chile, and the delightful regions of the higher 
elevations of Central America. There is nothing 
inherently demorahzing in the climate of lands 
inhabited by the Latin peoples in America, but 
there is something distinctly vitiating in the moral 
miasma breathed by these peoples for three hun- 
dred years. If cold chmates produced inflexible 
consciences, the Eskimos ought to be the most 
conscientious people on 
earth. But the moral 
climate of Jesuitism has 
produced a uniform ef- 
fect everywhere that it 
has supplied the soil for 
soul-growth. 




^ 



FAB FROM THE MADDING CROWD 



170 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

It is impossible to grow liberty of life, apart 
from its natural soil and necessary nourish- 
ment. If we are to have free institutions, we 
must first have free men. We cannot have a 
stream of water without a flowing fountain, nor 
ripe fruit without a living tree. Political liberty 
is impossible without moral freedom, and it is idle 
to expect independence of political action with- 
out the estabhshed right to think for oneself. 
When consciences are forced into fixed and pre- 
scribed molds it is useless to ask that men turn 
about and practice the principles of a free de- 
mocracy. Majority rule is meaningless where 
the confessional dominates the consciences of 
men. If we apply these factors in the social 
history and life of the Latin- American to the 
traits of his development most subject to criti- 
cism, we find much illumination. Out of all the 
discussion three items emerge, each significant 
and each closely related to the factors just men- 
tioned. 

The Latin mind is given to an idealism that 
reaches out for large things but often stops short 
of large actual reahzation. Out of this tendency 
grow weak initiative and superficial standards. 
As evidence of this characteristic may be cited the 
tendency in education to stress the superficial 
and showy features of the curriculum, leaving in 
the background the foundations and essentials of 
the intellectual life. Anything that makes a good 



THE FAMILY TREE 



171 



appearance is given place over the less spectac- 
ular realities. In architecture, a florid ornamen- 
tation is achieved, even at the expense of good 
plaster and proper surface stone, later with the 
resultant unsightliness. 

Deductive processes of thought are much in 
evidence. In outlining a plan of provincial gov- 
ernment, or a system of national education, the 




SEAWALL CHURCH AND SCHOOL, PANAMA 

paper plans will include every needed feature of 
a complete and theoretical system, without much 
regard for the local needs and actual conditions 
under which the full scheme is to be realized, 
which in all probability it will never be. To have 
projected and announced a grand undertaking in 
any department of human life is as important as 
to have accomphshed something. It is the grand- 
piano constitution and the one-finger administra- 
tion. It is not hard to find automobile under- 
takings and wheelbarrow accompHshments. 



172 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Now, all this is not cause for railing accusation 
but for thoughtful analysis. And the dominant 
cause is not far to seek. Where effort to trans- 
late ideals into realities is met by a barrier of 
official indifference, it is not strange if men give 
their time to dreaming rather than actualizing 
their visions. Where belief and conduct are pre- 
scribed and commercialism dominates the moral 
lives of men, it is easy to see that initiative is crip- 
pled at its source. Where a people is divested of 
responsibility for the final outcome and taught to 
pay the price and "believe or be damned," it is a 
rash spirit that will try to do more than dream 
dreams and write books and project Utopias. 
Without the incentive of encouragement to pro- 
duce practical results, no real efficiency has ever 
appeared among any people. There are accusa- 
tions of moral duplicity among Latin- American 
peoples. More serious and fundamental than 
impotent idealism, this defect registers itself in 
perversion of public trust, in the degradation of 
public office to the uses of private gain, in decep- 
tion, graft, and greed. Promises are easy, but 
performances are delayed until the would-be en- 
terprising citizen gives up in despair. 

In regard to this two things are to be said. In 
the first place, our own records as a people will 
not bear any too close inspection. Aside from 
race riots and labor disturbances, our Civil War 
furnishes our only revolution^ except the one 



THE FAMILY TREE 



173 




MANDT DID HER 
SHARE 



that produced the original United States. But 
when it comes to political prostitution of public 
office and the invention of grafting schemes, large 
and small, our own history does not give us much 
ground for boasting. And many a "revolution" 
has caused less bloodshed than a 
North American labor row. 

Further, so far as there is a 
difference between the conduct 
of the North and South, the ex- 
planation is not far to seek. 
Once admit the validity of the 
principle that it is right to do 
wrong for a good end, and a 
whole stream of moral duplicity 
is turned loose in public and pri- 
vate life. Jesuitism will account 
for almost any moral lapse in a 
land where all thinking has come 
under the spell of a creed in 
which the end justifies the means. 

Let this principle be ever so 
carefully guarded and pro- 
scribed, so long as human nature remains what 
it is, where personal interests are at stake the in- 
dividual is going to be his own final judge of the 
value of the end for which the means are devised. 
And on the basis of every man adapting means 
to his own ends we have moral chaos. 

Much has been said of the personal inmiorality 




THE CANAL DIGGER 



174 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

of many people of these southern lands. That 
the Latin- American is in any whit behind his 
northern neighbor in the integrity of his personal 
and domestic life remains to be proven. That his 
deflections from the straight and narrow path are 
much less concealed and by him are regarded as 
of small account is to be conceded. Here, again, 
the cause is not far to seek. With a sacerdotal 
example loose and irresponsible, it would be 
strange indeed if the men of South America 
showed a higher personal chastity than their spir- 
itual leaders and moral guides. 

The third accusation brought against our 
neighbors is that of political undemocracy. Gov- 
ernment by revolution is said to be the rule, and 
an election in which the "outs" win a victory over 
the "ins" is practically unknown. Victorious ma- 
jorities are governed in size only by the discretion 
of the dominant power, and the Latin mind seems 
a stranger to the fundamental principle of ac- 
cepting a majority decision as binding until the 
next election. 

To accept gracefully a majority decision 
against himself or his party is an art slowly ac- 
quired by any politician. On the playgrounds we 
see this trait; in amateur clubs and literary so- 
cieties we find it ; in the arena of political strife it 
does its worst and results in a state of affairs in 
which revolution becomes the general substitute 
for elections. 



THE FAMILY TREE 



175 



I stood one day on the campus of a Christian 
college in a Latin republic. The young men were 
playing baseball, and they were playing it well. 
I discovered that baseball was a regular part of 
their curriculum, that they 
were required to play so 
many games per week, and 
that they received credit for 
the games, provided they 
were played according to 
rules. When I inquired as to 
the reason for this I was in- 
formed by the efficient di- 
rector of the school that base- 
ball was in his opinion one of 
the most important subjects 
in the course. "There are 
two things that we can teach 
through baseball better than 
any other way. One is team 
work — a fellow can't play the 
game alone; and the other is 
the art of accepting defeat 
gracefully. Half of the boys 
must be defeated every day, 
which is an invaluable drill for them." 

Even as we discussed the matter, a tall fellow 
got into a dispute with the umpire, and after a 
dramatic flourish swung his arms in the air and 
shouted,"No juego mas" ("I will play no more") . 




THE TOWN PUMP, IN- 
TERIOR VILLAGE 



176 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

"There — do you hear that?" remarked the di- 
rector. "That is what we are trying to cure." 

As far as my observation has gone, nobody ex- 
cept the educational missionary is trying very 
hard to cure this most unfortunate trait in an 
otherwise very fine character. 

Here, again, it is not difficult to trace this 
stream to its sources. We understand much 




WAYSIDE CEMETERY IN THE JUNGLE 



better since 1914 whence came this political pe- 
culiarity. The ideals of European politics have 
been transferred across the Atlantic and their 
fruits on foreign soil have not been tempered by 
the vigor of free institutions grown strong in the 
processes of centuries. If Central- American re- 
publics are only constitutional monarchies in 
which the monarch governs the constitution, there 
is very good reason for the anomaly. If it is true 
that there is not a single republic on American 



THE FAMILY TREE 177 

soil south of "the hne," then it is to be said that 
there never can be such a repubhc until Latin- 
America ceases to think in terms of European 
history and Jesuitism is broken from its hold on 
the moral consciousness of the men who make and 
unmake republics in the Latin world. Success- 
ful republics have been developed in that turbu- 
lent but onmoving stream of Western and mod- 
ern ideals that has found its most complete ex- 
pression in the United States, but which has also 
tinctured the thinking and influenced the political 
processes of practically every country on earth 
except Prussia. We ourselves are not perfect 
yet, and it behooves us to withhold the stones 
from our neighbors until we can show a clean 
record. We will have some distance to go before 
democracy is a finished product, and it will be a 
good plan to take the neighbors along with us. 



CHAPTER XII 
LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 

Much misunderstanding has been due to 
faulty methods of approach to our southern 
neighbor. Pohtical diplomacy, commercial com- 
petition, and military displays will never get to 
the core of this international apple. The Latin- 
American is a man of heart, and until we recog- 
nize this fact we shall fail to understand him. 
Sjrmpathy and courtesy will avail more than 
battleships and boycotts. This man is a born 
diplomat and has high intellectual development, 
but the deep and dominant motives of his life are 
his friendships and affections. 

If we know the ruHng motives of men and 
races, we may avoid nearly all the misunderstand- 
ings and incriminating accusations that arise 
when we occupy different points of view, but 
matters look very different when we get at them 
from the viewpoint of the other man. 

Seeming contradictions dissolve and weak- 
nesses appear as unsuccessful aspirations. Our 
complaints of low initiative become more reserved 
when we remember that spiritual slavery is a cer- 
tain antidote for the pioneering spirit. The pres- 
ence of a high though fruitless ideahsm amid 

178 



LATIlSr-AMERICAN HEART 179 

insurmountable difficulties attests a virile and 
buoyant spirit, captive and caged. Where toil 
has been treated with contempt for ages nothing 
short of economic helplessness can follow. 

As for financial faithlessness, who shall throw 
the first stone? If once we begin to justify the 
means by the end, commercial life is going to 
suffer. If we begin to complain about the inse- 
curity of political institutions, we need to remem- 
ber that democracy is one of the first and finest 
fruits of a free mind and heart. And we have not 
yet ourselves arrived sufficiently to do any boast- 
ing. 

To know our Latin-Americans as personal 
friends is to attain a new viewpoint on the whole 
Pan-American problem. We may not bhnd our 
eyes to their defects more than to our own — ^there 
are plenty of both ; but understanding brings ex- 
planation of many things, and if we know all and 
understand fully, we may come to a different ver- 
dict. The southern man far surpasses us in cer- 
tain traits of which we have taken small account 
and in which we are racially deficient. When 
given free opportunity, satisfactory response ap- 
pears to the stimuli of democracy and initiative. 

To know personally the Spanish- American is 
to become aware of his keen intuitions, his high 
personal charm, his strong sympathies, his con- 
structive imagination, and his hearty idealism; 
and whatever else he may be, he is loyal to his 



180 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 




friends and their interests. 
He may not be so intent on 
doing something, but he has 
time for social graces and 
arts, and possesses an innate 
refinement and grace of 
character that we take pride 
in having neglected. 

The Latin at his best is 
the racial goal of South 
America. Who cares to be 
judged by the social leav- 
ings of his own country? 
The South American best 
is intelhgent, refined, and 
faithful to trusts. His men- 
tal processes are touched 
with a constructive imagina- 
tion that finds high expres- 
sion in his abundant art and 
literature. With a nervous, 
artistic, and sensitive tem- 
perament, he responds 
quickly to friendly ap- 



COCONUTS — SO GOOD AND SO HIGH 



LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 18l 

preaches and stands ready to do his full share in 
social obligations. 

That peons and ignorantes are not thus de- 
scribed is only to say that the tramps and social 
unacceptables of any country are not to be classed 
with the intellectuals and social leaders. 

The personal equation is apt to be decisive in 
South America. Commercial travelers learn this 
to their profit or loss, as they adopt or disdain the 
ruling motives of the men with whom they deal. 
It may do very well in some cities of the United 
States for the breezy commercial traveler to dis- 
play his samples, dehver his oration, and give the 
merchant three minutes to take or leave the best 
goods on earth. Such methods in Spanish coun- 
tries means no business at all. Selling goods in 
South America is a social function in which are 
involved members of the family and, incidentally, 
some very pleasant hours. Any sort of make- 
believe is useless. Unless a man really likes the 
people he had better abandon any plans to do 
business with them. He may get on in Chicago, 
but in Bogota he will be very lonesome. 

When a man sells goods on talk he may dispose 
of inferior qualities occasionally, and trust that 
he can talk enough faster next time to make up 
for his loss of standing ; but when goods are sold 
on friendship a single mistake in quality means 
ruptured relations and the end of commercial 
confidence. And where friendship furnisher the 



182 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

basis of business the buyer will protect the seller 
in return for uniform good treatment on his part. 
Like all other racial customs, when once it is 
understood the system is not so unreasonable as 
at first appears. 

An Englishman traveling in South America 
told me that on one occasion he sold a large bill 
of goods on credit to a man who proved to be a 
rascal. As the time for the return of the sales- 
man and the payment for the goods drew near the 
buyer tried to sell out his entire stock at half 
price, with the intention of leaving the country 
with the money. But all the other merchants 
were friends of the salesman and refused to take 
advantage of the situation, to the loss of their 
friend. They preferred to lose their own profits. 

Business in Latin-America is a personal 
matter. If a deal goes wrong, somebody is re- 
sponsible. North American business has a large 
impersonal element, and the man who makes a 
bad bargain usually feels that he had himself 
largely to blame. The joke is on him, and he 
will exercise more shrewdness next time. But 
the southern merchant views the case differently, 
and it behooves the salesman to handle only goods 
that will move to the profit of the buyer. 

When once this basis of friendly confidence is 
well set up it is easy to consummate large trans- 
actions with very httle preliminary investigation. 
The capitalist is more interested in knowing what 



LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 183 

his trusted friend thinks than in getting data 
upon which to base his own conclusions. 

National ambassadors and Christian mission- 
aries soon learn what the business man found out 
long ago: that there is only one road to success- 
ful relations with these people and that is the way 
of the heart. Neither minister nor missionary nor 




BOILING "dULCE" — CRUDE SUGAR 



merchant can succeed unless he genuinely likes 
the people with whom he is dealing. Any mis- 
sionary who is afflicted with a sense of superiority 
had better look up the saiHng dates of any 
steamer line connecting with the United States. 

In meeting strangers the right kind of a letter 
of introduction has high value. Let the letter be 
from a personal friend, and the homes and hearts 
are opened in a way that surprises the more coldly 



184. PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

formal man from the north. It is a cheering and 
heartening experience to present a good letter to 
a fine family and be received with a cordiality and 
genuine hospitality that leaves no doubt as to 
the honest motives of the hosts. 

But how are we to find the road to the heart of 
any people unless we can speak to them in their 
own tongue in which they were born? The in- 
terpreter does very well for trivial and formal 
matters, but who wants to use an interpreter in 
his own family? Here is where the "United 
Stateser" gets into trouble. As a linguist he does 
not shine; in fact, he is barely visible in a good 
light. He considers it beneath him to take the 
trouble to learn anyone's language. Why should 
he? He can speak English already. If anyone 
has anything to say to him, let him say it in Eng- 
lish ; and if he cannot speak English, then surely 
he can have nothing worth saying. It is a ready 
formula, but it fails to reach the hearts of men 
who do not happen to have been born in the 
United States. 

The Latin is a better linguist than his neighbor 
to the north. Nearly all the better class people 
speak some English, though they are very modest 
about the matter. Practically all of them speak 
two or more languages. But even if they do 
surpass us in speech and can use some English, 
we are not excused from acquiring a working 
knowledge of the language of the people with 



LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 185 

whom we are to deal. The increasing develop- 
ment of Spanish teaching in North American 
schools is one of the most helpful signs of the 
times. 

Nowhere does the innate courtesy of the Latin- 
American shine more than in his bearing toward 
the novice who tries to learn his language. We 
of the United States are wont to laugh at the lin- 
guistic struggles of the stranger within our gates, 
but not so with the South American. He is a 
gentleman, and will take immense pains to assist 
anyone who makes an effort to talk to him. He 
seems to regard it as a compliment that anyone 
should try to use his language. Any faltering 
effort will receive immediate encouragement. 

A volume could be written about the comical 
blunders of North American tyros in language 
learning. A hundred or two garbled words, vig- 
orous guessing and violent arm action make up 
the linguistic equipment of some would-be "in- 
terpreters." Mixed English, Spanish, jerks, and 
profanity will do wonders where there is nothing 
else, but as substitutes for language they are far 
from ideal. Classic is the story of one of these 
interpreters who struggled in vain to deliver the 
meaning of his friend to a native, and at last gave 
up in disgust, regretting that he "ever learned the 
blamed language anyway." 

Spanish is possibly as easy to learn as any lan- 
guage other than that of one's native land. Aside 



186 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

from its complicated verb and annoying gender, 
it has few difficulties that need cause acute dis- 
tress. But the score of "easy methods" without 
teachers are to be avoided. There is no easy way 
to learn a language. It takes work, hard work, 
and a lot of it to learn a second language. But it 
can be done, and to acquire a new medium of ex- 
pression, even in middle hf e, is an experience not 
to be taken lightly. It is above all things inter- 
esting. It comes at last to this : the only way to 
speak, write, or read Spanish effectively is to 
learn it. Short cuts bring short results. 

And the only road to a worthwhile understand- 
ing of the Latin- American is that of a sym- 
pathetic personal acquaintance and genuine 
friendship. It is a matter of heart more than of 
head, and unless the North American has a heart 
himself he had better acquire one or abandon his 
efforts to deal with the Latin- American. 

To the traveler from the Orient Latin- Amer- 
ica is easy to know. There is much in Spanish 
ceremonial, love of life and color and rhythm, the 
innate chivalry and poHteness, so often absent 
from the direct processes of the North American, 
to suggest the peculiar charm of the Orient at its 
best. The ornateness of architecture appears in 
the East and West in nearly equal measure. 
When it comes to elaborate speeches and flatter- 
ing expressions, not even the honorifics of cere- 
monial Japan have much advantage over the gra- 



LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 187 

cious and complimentary extravagances of the 
Spanish- American. 

It was at a school entertainment that the direc- 
tor, who spoke excellent Spanish, was unavoid- 
ably absent, and the writer was pressed into 
service at the last moment to explain some stere- 
opticon views and make a few announcements. 
The language was that of a tyro and must have 
afforded material for much amusement to the cul- 
tured parents of the school children. But no one 
laughed, and as a reporter for a Spanish paper 
chanced to be on hand, the morning edition 
stated that the entertainment was a high success 
and that the views were described in the choicest 
of classic Spanish while the announcements were 
dehvered with a diction of the purest and highest 
type. It was the conventional manner of describ- 
ing any public event. 

This temperament leads to oratory as rivers 
run to the sea. Given a few ideas for a start, and 
any educated Latin will deliver an extempore 
oration that suggests weeks of careful prepara- 
tion. Rounded periods and classic expression 
mark every polished phrase. 

Probably the most perplexing and annoying 
thing about the North American in the eyes of his 
southern neighbor is our incessant hurry and 
rush. We may be millionaires in money but we 
are hopelessly bankrupt in time. And the South 
American is both millionaire and philanthropist 



188 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

in time. He always has a surplus and is willing 
to use it — and his friend's too. Some of our 
hurrying about is regarded as a great joke. 
Clayton Sedgwick Cooper quotes a Bengalese 
of Calcutta as regarding a certain Englishman 
as "one of the uncomfortable works of God." 
Such are we of the United States in the eyes of 
our southern friends. 

The formaHties of social hfe are of vast im- 
portance to the Panamanian, and they are also 
important to the North American who wishes to 
transact any sort of business with officials and 
educated men of any class. Dress suits and high 
hats are not to be despised if one is to get on in 
the capital city. Neither are business and politics 
to be separated if any business is to be done. 

During 1918 the death of President Valdez 
within a month of the constitutional date of the 
national election created a situation in which the 
election board was controlled by one political 
party and the police department by the other, 
spelling inevitable trouble. Military authorities 
on the Canal Zone took a hand and sent over a 
troop of cavalry to police the city during the elec- 
tion week. At sight of the soldiers panic pos- 
sessed many women and children, who had been 
told that the Americans, if they came, would 
shoot down all persons on the street without 
warning. A few hours convinced the populace of 
the error of this widely circulated report, and the 



LATIN-AMERICAN HEART 189 



election passed peacefully, the party in office 
winning. 

Panamanian officials are uniformly courteous, 
kindly, and will go to any 
reasonable length to 
grant any proper request, 
especially if it comes from 
a friend. I have called on 
various men in high 
authority many times on 
diverse matters and have 
never failed to be received 
cordially and given the 
best of personal treat- 
ment. It has occasionally 
happened, however, that 
after leaving the official I 
tried to recall just what 
he had stated or agreed to 
do, and had difficulty in 
finding anything definite. 

Perhaps Latin char- 
acter reaches its highest 
level in family life. The 
women of the Latin race 
are noted for natural 
grace and comeliness, and in their own homes 
they give themselves to their husbands and chil- 
dren with a devotion to which some of the club 
women of northern lands are strangers, as well 




WASHING BY THE RIVER 



190 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

as their families. Motherhood is a high calling 
before which all else must give way. The open 
life of the northern family, with its easy conven- 
tions and free hospitality, is largely unknown, 
but a close and intimate family hfe is built up 
essentially stronger in some features than any- 
thing found further north. The Spanish home is 
a very select and secluded affair, into the charmed 
circle of which only the most intimate friends may 
enter. 

This wife and mother usually knows nothing 
of her husband's affairs, and has little freedom 
of the streets or public places. There is none of 
that comradeship in business interests often 
found in the States between husband and wife. 

The senoritas, or young women, of these homes 
are decidedly feminine. They make much of cos- 
metics, but they do at least spare us the assorted 
colors of the hair dyer's art. And they do not 
make a holy show of themselves on the street, 
with loud manners and conspicuous costumes, 
as if to attract attention of all passers-by. It 
must be said that some of the better class young 
women of these countries are "stunning lookers," 
and are always attractive and well bred, but with 
limited educational advantages they are apt to be 
shallow conversationahsts. Many of the men 
prefer them that way. For a woman to know too 
much about business and politics detracts from 
her distinctly feminine charm in the eyes of these 



LATIlSr-AMERICAN HEART 191 

Spanish men. What rehgious devotion exists in 
these countries is found among the women, who 
usually go regularly to mass and confession. 

Strictest chaperonage is maintained over 
young women, no girl being permitted for a 
moment to be alone with a young man, a system 
that would make slow headway in North Amer- 
ica. And the women are long suffering with 
their husbands, from whom they endm^e conduct 
that would break up almost any North American 
home. 

The Panamanian woman has none of the bold- 
ness of the new woman of Argentine, nor the 
ultra-timidity of Peruvian seclusion. She knows 
the value of balconies and lace shawls and effec- 
tive coiffures, and it must be said that in spite of 
rigorous supervision and never-failing modesty 
of demeanor, she has a charm and a "come- 
hither" in her eye that has won the heart of many 
a North American. 

The possibihties of the Latin race are perhaps 
best measured by the occasional rare characters 
that break through the bonds of convention and 
precedent and attain an altitude of gracious no- 
bility unsurpassed anywhere on earth. Occa- 
sional products of missionary schools show results 
in character and efficiency that indicate clearly 
the latent capacity for a something in which the 
brusque Saxon is too often deficient. 

The "Christ of the Andes" was set up on the 



192 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

boundary line between Argentine and Chile as a 
suggestion of the only basis of permanent peace 
in the life and teachings of the Prince of Peace. 
This famous statue was the result of the work 
of a woman, the Senora de Costa, president of 
the Christian Mothers' League of Buenos Ayres. 
Cast of old Spanish cannon, and installed in its 
lofty elevation of thirteen thousand feet in the 
Andes, the monument was dedicated March 13, 
1914, as much a memorial to the work of a Latin- 
American woman as a testimonial to the peaceful 
intentions of the two nations. 

There is a Spanish word, not exactly trans- 
latable into English, which may be taken as the 
key to Latin character at its best. It is the word 
"simpatico," which means something more than 
"sympathetic." A man is simpdtico when he is 
gracious and open-hearted and likable and con- 
siderate of other folks' feelings. There ought 
to be a course in simpdtico for every prospective 
missionary and business man in the United States 
who has any intention of deahng with the Latin- 
American. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE CARIBBEAlSr WORLD 

Readers of Robinson Crusoe associate the 
Caribbean Sea with piracy and rmn, but usually 
have few other ideas on the subject. Most peo- 
ple of the United States have scarcely so much 
as heard that there be any Caribbean world ex- 
cept that it is somewhere in the tropics. 

To be sure, the Caribbean Sea has a way of 
impressing itself upon those who sail its troubled 
tides. Perhaps the shades of the villains who 
used to cross these waters on their murderous ex- 
peditions still linger to raise the adverse winds 
and toss the seasick passenger in his misery. 
Certain it is that very few travelers have any 
affection for the seven hundred miles of salt 
water between the Mosquito Coast and the islands 
so notorious in the sixteenth century. 

It is with something of surprise, then, that the 
prowler about Panama learns of a homogeneous 
population living on the chain of islands that 
begins below Porto Rico and swings downward 
in a graceful curve to the tip of the South Amer- 
ican coast. These Lesser Antilles mark the 
eastern boundaries of the famous, or mfamous, 
Caribbean Sea. Though small in size, their con- 

193 



194 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

siderable numbers and large populations make 
them important. If they are not so well known 
now, at least they have the distinction of having 
been discovered by Columbus when he set out to 
find a way to the East Indies and discovered the 
West Indies instead. 

The political complexion of these islands varies 
greatly. Government is shared by Spain, 
France, England, and the United States, and the 
languages spoken conform to the governing 




COSTA RICA FARM HOME 

power. The purchase of the Danish West Indies 
has given the United States a permanent and 
prominent influence in the group. 

No account of matters Panamanian could omit 
reference to the people of this West Indian 
world. From the beginning of Panama's history 
Caribbean adventurers have crossed the sea in 
any craft that would float, and have played a 
large part in the restless events of the Isthmus. 
West Indian influence and blood were mingled 
with the history of the Isthmus for four hundred 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 195 

years, and in these last days it has been the West 
Indian who furnished the labor that dug the 
Panama Canal, and who still contributes the 
brawn and perspiration for the work of the Canal 
Zone. Twenty-five thousand of these people live 
on or near the Zone, and are employed by its gov- 
ernment, and probably as many more live near 
by and mingle with the native life of Panama. 
All through the interior there are always some 
West Indians. 

Without the West Indian the digging of the 
Canal would not have been impossible, but would 
have been much more difficult. Chinese coolies 
would have cost more to import and could hardly 
have worked for less money. Considering the 
cost of living on the Canal Zone, the West Indian 
has furnished some of the cheapest labor in the 
world. In construction days the nine or ten cents 
an hour wage was more than the black man had 
received at home, but his hving expenses on the 
Zone were very much higher than on the Carib- 
bean Islands. The wage scale of the West In- 
dian on the Canal Zone has been revised and in- 
creased several times by the American govern- 
ment in an effort to keep pace with the rising cost 
of living; but it must be said that the laborer's 
wage of about thirty dollars a month, with from 
three dollars to six dollars deducted for the rent 
of two rooms, does not afford a very sumptuous 
living for a man and his family. The "silver" 



196 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

man on the Zone pays the same price for his food 
and clothes as does the "gold" white man who re- 
ceives twenty-five per cent higher wages than is 
paid for the same work in the States, and in addi- 
tion has a furnished apartment or cottage free of 
rent cost. The men on the "gold" rate complain 
of the high cost of living. What they would do 
if reduced to one sixth of their present wages they 
do not stop to consider. It is not a pleasant sub- 
ject to* face, but it is hoped that the wages of the 
West Indian may be lifted to the point where he 
can at least buy food enough to keep him in good 
physical condition. 

The West Indies furnishes the plantation labor 
of Panama and Costa Rica, without which there 
would be little plantation work done. In the hot 
and humid banana groves he endures the temper- 
ature and handles the huge banana bunches as 
though born for the job, as perhaps he is. Out 
from Almirante and Puerto Limon range the 
tracks of the plantation railroads through hun- 
dreds of miles of banana forests, where the black 
man supplies the labor for the largest farms in 
the world. Forty or fifty thousand of these peo- 
ple live on and about the plantations of the At- 
lantic coast and without them the largest agri- 
cultural enterprise ever carried on under one 
management would collapse. 

The West Indian on the Isthmus is not the 
West Indian at home. He may live and die on 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 197 



the mainland, but he thinks in terms of the islands 
from which he came. Like the American Negro, 
he is of African descent, but his African origin 
is so remote that no trace of it remains in his con- 
sciousness, though it is evi- 
dent in his psychology. Most 
of the West Indians about 
the Canal Zone dream of re- 
turning to the islands again. 

These people of the Carib- 
bean world have a decided 
race consciousness, and in 
their thinking and living are 
a world unto themselves. 
Separate and distinct from 
the Greater Antilles and the 
mainland, they know very 
little of the continental life 
and customs, and any at- 
tempt to classify them with 
American Negroes or Euro- 
peans raises a set of social 
problems difficult to solve. 

To the North American 




BANANAS THIRTY FEET HIGH 



198 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

the mental processes of the West Indian are a 
psychological jungle in which the explorer is soon 
lost. Perhaps no one has yet essayed to really 
understand this man, and those who have tried to 
analyze him maintain that he does not understand 
himself. Certain it is that he does not trouble 

himself with any self -anal- 
ysis. He has enough 
other things to occupy his 
attention. With the psy- 
chological background of his 
remote African ancestors, 
his race characteristics have 
changed very little since the 
days when his forefathers 
were forcibly torn from 
their native land and de- 
ported into savage slavery. 
The social sanctions of 

SAN BLAS INDIANS HAVE 

"poker faces" the West Indian are rigid 

and well established. The list of forbidden things 
is long and complex, and of signs, and dreams and 
portents, strange and powerful, there seems no 
end. Numerous negatives appear in his social 
and personal creed, and he who violates these 
prohibitions must be a courageous soul. To in- 
troduce any original, new idea into this scheme 
of things is a difficult task, and is apt to arouse a 
whole chain of reactions, complex and mysteri- 
ous. This man will follow literally any able 




THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 199 

leadership, but the leader must go in the direction 
of the established currents of opinion or he will 
have a hard time of it. 

The West Indian has a religious capacity that 
impresses the visitor as a remarkable aptitude for 
things sacred. Such, indeed, it is. And the reli- 
gious life of the earnest and conscientious mem- 
bers of this race exhibits a fine type of devotion 
and sacrifice. As might be expected, there is free 
expression of emotional experience, but on the 
whole those who are truly religious match their 
songs by their deeds and their testimonies by their 
lives. Practically nothing is known on the 
Isthmus of anything bordering on hysteria. 
When it comes to familiarity with the Enghsh 
Bible the average, church member will put to 
shame his white friend, and in interpretation of 
scripture some very unique and interesting ef- 
forts are produced. 

In matters of doctrine most of these people are 
rigid immersionists. The women invariably wear 
their hats in church, on the ground that Saint 
Paul commanded such observance, but they 
ignore the exhortation of the same apostle that 
the women keep silence in the churches. All spe- 
cial occasions possess thrilling interest, and al- 
most any West Indian will go hungry to get good 
clothes. How they manage to dress as well as 
they do on the incomes they receive is a mystery 
that has not yet been solved. 



200 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

An experienced missionary among these people 
says that practically every West Indian at some 
time in his life is a member of some church. If 
this is true, many of the West Indians in Panama 
are backsliders, as a majority are not at present 
showing any interest in Christian observances or 
moral living. Possibly many of those who are 
genuinely devout and consistently Christian 
establish a membership in several different 
churches, one after the other. Tiring of one 
church, discontented with the pastor, or encoun- 
tering personal difficulties with other members, it 
is easy and convenient to join some other congre- 
gation, and of split-ups and break-offs there 
seems no end. Nearly every church on the 
Isthmus has had its deflections and divisions, and 
anything like the modern movement toward unity 
and cooperation of the Christian program is a 
terra incognita to this enthusiastic individuahst. 

A surprising thing is the capacity for financial 
self-sacrifice of the West Indian. Out of the 
pennies that he receives as wages he contributes 
liberally to the support of his church and for the 
education of his children. Nearly all West In- 
dian churches on and near the Canal Zone are 
self-supporting, and nearly all West Indian 
schools are maintained from tuition fees. If 
these people were to receive good wages, they 
would not only wear good clothes but would con- 
tribute to community enterprises and keep their 



THE CARIBBEAN WOULD 201 



children in school as long as possible. That the 
more dissolute members of the community would 
spend their money for rum is no 
reason for depriving the laborer of 
his hire. 

Living without adequate means 
of recreation or possibil- 
ities of culture or wide in- 
formation, life is never- 
theless saved from deadly 
monotony by the exercise 
of the high gifts of con- 
troversy. When it comes 
to a straight, head-on 
wrangle the West Indian 
shines in a glory all his 
own. Not even a loqua- 
cious Oriental can surpass 
his powers of abuse and 
lordly contempt for his 
adversary. If words 
were bullets, the whole 
population would perish 
in twenty-four hours, in- 
nocent and guilty to- 
gether. To the uniniti- 
ated bystander it seems 
that an empire is being lost, but the old-timers 
cease to heed the quarreling and go their way 
indifferent to the social safety valve of these 




WHERE STYLES MOLEST 
NO MORE 



202 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

greatest natural controversialists of the tropic 
world. A young woman on the train in Costa 
Rica left her seat to speak to a friend and 
another girl slipped in next to the window. 
When the visitor returned the program began. 
Back and forth flew claims, charges and counter- 
charges as to the ownership of the seat. With 
indescribable scorn the usurper said, "Do you 
want a seat in my lap ?" which provoked "Ah, now 
I see how you was raised." 

"Indeed, and you have no manners at all, it is 
plain to be seen." 

Back and forth the duel rages until the first 
claimant sought another seat, saying, "I certainly 
does respect myself too highly to sit by the likes 
of you." 

The combat closed thus: "When I look upon 
you I know what you is, for I can read your face." 

All of which falls flat without the wholly in- 
imitable accent of the Jamaican dialect. 

This accent of the British subject in the West 
Indies is a dialect so peculiar that it defies the 
most skillful impersonators. Somehow only 
those to the manner born seem able to acquire or 
imitate the strong combination of London cock- 
ney and African rhythm. The more intelligent 
and better-educated people speak intelligibly, but 
it is common to hear alleged English that is al- 
most impossible to understand. There is not the 
slightest resemblance to the traditional dialect of 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 203 

the Southern Negro, and as for expressing it in 
cold type there is no alphabet on earth that can 
represent the sounds and inflections produced. 

The West Indian in Panama has a certain 
economic efficiency on the level to which he has 
been trained, otherwise he would not have been 
brought to the Zone by tens of thousands and 
retained there through the years of Canal con- 
struction on into the present period of operation 
and maintenance. Under a boss this man is faith- 
ful and efficient, provided the task assigned him 
is within the scope of his training and ability. 
And however slow or inaccurate he may be, he 
can hardly help earning the wages that he re- 
ceives. And if he did not work at all, the pa- 
tience with which he endures the frequent abuse 
and cursings of the impatient gang bosses ought 
to be worth something. Certainly, the reader of 
this would not take what is handed out to the 
West Indian for ten times his wages. It is true 
that he is not strong on independent judgment, 
and that when left to his own counsel he may do 
some strange things and perhaps very little of 
anything. But how is a man to develop judg- 
ment who has never borne responsibihty? 

Deep down in the heart of this man is slowly 
rising a resentment against the economic condi- 
tions he finds on the Zone, and in many cases 
silent and dangerous hate is gradually filling the 
hearts of the unorganized and helpless "silver" 



204 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

men. Unless conditions are improved the time 
may come when this resentment may flare up in a 
useless and hopeless protest. But it is more 
likely that the wage scale will be readjusted from 
time to time and the explosion forestalled. Oc- 
casionally some of these people get away to the 
United States, but none of them ever return. 
For them the patriarchal Canal Zone offers no 
attractions compared with the free competition of 
the States. It is maintained by officials of the 
Zone that the wage scale is as high as available 
funds will warrant ; that if the West Indian had 
any more money, it would do him no good, and 
that the increases in wages already granted have 
fully kept pace with the rise in the cost of living. 
In matters of personal morals the West Indian 
is accused of loose matrimonial practices. A 
priest said to me one day that if two command- 
ments — ^the seventh and eighth — could be omitted 
from the Ten, the West Indian would get along 
all right. This slander is not deserved; but in- 
vestigation into facts reveals that the morals of 
the West Indians are but little better than those 
of Panama. Concubinage is widely practiced, 
with a system of financial support; but no more 
so than everywhere else in the tropics except on 
the Canal Zone, where moral conditions are ex- 
ceptionally good. The remark of the priest may 
have been due to the fact that most of the West 
Indians are Protestants. 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 205 



Some characteristics of rare merit and inter- 
est occasionally arise among these people. They 
do not sing as well as their northern cousins, but 
they produce orators of no 
mean ability. Earnest, con- 
sistent, faithful, affectionate, 
and original in expression, 
the best of these people af- 
ford promise of what may be 
expected when better condi- 
tions bring large opportu- 
nity. 

Like other races not long 
exposed to civilization, the 
children of these people show 
surprising precocity. They 
give excellent account of 
themselves in primary 
schools, and in performances 
at public entertainments they 
are letter-perfect. Fifty 
numbers on a program and 
never a slip or a failure 
throughout, and not a com- 
plaint or criticism except that 
it was a little short. One 
large church established a record by producing 
.a Christmas program containing one hundred 
and eight numbers. Through the primary years 
these youngsters sometimes surpass their white 




CHINESE ALWAYS START 
A SCHOOL. 




SCHOOLDAYS 



206 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

friends, but the economic pressure of living con- 
ditions crowds them nearly all out of school at 
the end of the fourth or fifth grade. Once they 
get a groundwork in the three "Rs" they are con- 
sidered well educated for life. 

As may be expected, the birth rate is high, but 
large families are rare because of the distressing 
and unnecessary high rate of infant mortality. 
How could it be otherwise when a whole family 
lives in one room on twenty-five dollars a month 
with food at New York prices ? 

That the Jamaicans are a gregarious folk is to 
be expected. The social instinct is always strong 
in any people of African descent. Canal Zone 
bosses complain that their employees prefer to 
leave the clean and sanitary quarters of the Zone 
and live in the Guachapali and San Miguel dis- 
tricts of Panama and in Colon, where they are 
crowded together in a way that would prove fatal 
to a white man. The constant company and 
crowded conditions do not trouble the West In- 
dians, whereas the rigid restrictions of the silver 
quarters of the Zone he often finds objectionable. 

What the West Indian most needs is a fair 
chance. He is cursed and disparaged on every 
hand. He is to blame for being ragged and un- 
washed, but when he goes hungry and dresses up, 
then he is a hopeless spendthrift and a fraudulent 
dude. It is useless to pay him fair wages because 
he would spend the money. Unscrupulous land- 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 207 

lords are allowed to extort enormous rents for 
wretched quarters in Panama and Colon, be- 
cause, if the Jamaican did not spend his money 
that way, he would pay it out for something else. 
He is looked down upon as not being highly edu- 
cated, and it is claimed that the more he knows 
the worse off he is. No matter what happens he 
is to blame. If the cholera should appear in 
Panama, or the Gold Hill should slide into the 
Canal, the West Indian would be the guilty 
party. Surely, he is worth his wages merely as 
a target for the verbal explosions of his boss. 
Some men would have difficulty in holding their 
jobs were it not for the timely assistance of this 
"goat" of the Zone. Living conditions in Cale- 
donia and Guachapali would give the New York 
East Side something to think about. Rooms ten 
or twelve feet square are rented out to families 
who usually stretch a curtain across the middle, 
sleep huddled together in the rear at night, and 
live in the front of the "flat" the rest of the time. 
From some primitive prejudice comes a violent 
dislike of fresh air, especially at night, when 
every room is as nearly as possible hermetically 
sealed. In a tropical temperature no one has yet 
explained how the inmates live till morning. 

Naked children swarm in the streets. At first 
the visitor is properly shocked, but soon ceases to 
notice these ebony cherubs. In time, however, 
one does get tired of it. Along the sidewalks and 



208 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

in the doorsteps the evening hours are turned into 
neighborhood debating societies and wranghng 
clubs, and between the arguments and disputes, 
and the always nearby street meeting, there is 
never a dull moment. That is why they prefer 
living there to the quiet and monotonous life in 
the silver town on the Zone. 

Religious gatherings on the street are a marked 
feature of the night life of this part of the city. 
Torchlights and crowds, vigorous singing and 
enthusiastic exhortations mark the visible fea- 
tures of the efforts of these earnest persuaders 
of their neighbors to flee from the wrath to come. 
If street demonstrations were confined to reli- 
gious meetings, all might be well. While ever- 
present canteenas dispense cheap and deadly rum 
;there will always be people who will go hungry 
and ragged to buy "firewater," and with one or 
jtwo drinks aboard the West Indian becomes a 
very talkative and quarrelsome person. Often 
have I seen sidewalks spattered with blood, and 
a common sight is that of a couple of policemen 
leading away a gory victim or culprit. 

So scanty is the food ration of these people that 
the general custom prevails of eating very little 
during the day and then making a feast at night 
of whatever food can be secured. The Meth- 
odist missionary school in this district estabhshed 
a soup line at noon for the feeding of hungry 
babies who came to the school without their break- 



THE CARIBBEAlSr WORLD 209 

fast and had nothing at home to eat at noon. 
Any sort of "learning" under such circumstances 
was impossible. 

Three or four things must be supplied if the 
West Indian is to rise above his present level. 
He needs living wages, he needs intelligent and 
responsible leadership; he needs a better educa- 
tion, and he needs a broader social basis and a 
wider horizon for his circle of life. 

There are a few lawyers and doctors and teach- 
ers of this race, and there are a number of preach- 
ers, who consider themselves to be the intellec- 
tuals, but there is no concert of purpose or plan 
for progress among these people. Each man is 
intent upon exalting his own personal promi- 
nence, or furthering the interests of the little 
group to which he belongs. West Indian life at 
present is segregated into little cliques and rings, 
represented by churches, lodges, dancing clubs, 
and other organizations. So far no common 
cause has united any of these factors in any pro- 
gram of progress. So intent are they upon indi- 
vidual emphasis that any thought of the social 
whole seems almost impossible. Several efforts 
have been made to unite in a common program of 
service the different churches in a given commu- 
nity, but so far small success has attended these 
worthy plans. 

Perhaps more than almost anything else the 
West Indian needs racial self-respect. He is 



210 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

humble enough before his boss, and if well treated 
is loyal and faithful; but for his own kind he has 
little appreciation. "I will never work for my 
own color," boasted a proud cook one day. And 
one of the most difficult problems of the mission- 
ary grows out of the fact that the West Indians 
generally despise each other. To arouse leader- 
ship and stimulate ambition among a people who 
look down upon themselves is a big task. The 
individual man will have to get his mind on some- 
thing besides his effort to exalt himself above all 
his fellows before any great progress can be 
made. The fundamental trouble with the West 
Indian is that he looks up to those whom he con- 
siders his superiors and looks down upon every- 
body else. It seems difficult for him to look 
across or on a level, and recognize other people as 
being on the same plane with himself. 

The educational equipment of these people 
needs to be extended beyond the present mere 
elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
Some intellectual window into the great world 
out beyond the Caribbean Sea must be provided 
if there is to be deliverance from the superstition 
and iron-bound customs that have held them fast 
for ten thousand years. 

What the West Indian needs is not more 
vigorous swaying of congregations nor more 
loudly shouting enthusiasts, but a program of 
Christian living that will enlarge the boundaries 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 211 

of life and push back the horizons of interest. 
Debating societies, reading courses, study clubs, 
extension lectures, night schools, vocational train- 
ing, good moving picture programs — all of these 
will do much to break the spell of the past and in- 
troduce new ideas where they will take root and 
bear harvest. Here is a fertile field for a Chris- 
tian settlement, but the settlement worker should 
be a resident of the community. One difficulty 
with the mission work now conducted is that it is 
done from the top down, and from the outside in. 
Any attempt toward higher education will need 
some endowment. It is a tragedy that these 
people, out of their wretched poverty, are com- 
pelled to pay tuition fees for the meager educa- 
tion that their children receive. Some of the 
plans now being formulated for a broader work 
in these communities deserve every encourage- 
ment and support. 

It is greatly to the credit of the West Indian 
that he nearly always manages in some way to 
send his children to school, cost what it may. 
Considering his opportunities, he does well. If 
the American people were suddenly asked to pay 
one or two dollars a month for each child sent to 
school, there would be educational revolution. 

It is the intention of the Canal Zone govern- 
ment to house its employees on the Zone as soon 
as quarters can be provided, but this will require 
some time. As all "silver" employees are charged 



212 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 




THREE IN A ROW 



a monthly rent for these quarters, the project is 
a business matter for the Zone. Twelve families 
are usually quartered in one two-story house, two 

rooms and a porch section to 
the family, with two wash 
rooms and sanitary quarters 
for the whole house. At 
five dollars per month rent 
for each family, the house 
yields an income of eight 
hundred and forty dollars 
per year. In a building of 
about the same size four 
white families would be 
quartered rent free. 

There is abundant oppor- 
tunity in the Republic of 
Panama for the organiza- 
tion of agricultural coloniza- 
tion schemes. Good land is 
plentiful. Famihes could be 
placed on the land without 
much housing expense, and 
if food could be supplied 
them for a few months, self- 
support would soon be es- 
tablished. Some philanthropist might render 
valuable service and open up new opportunities 
for a large number of these people by placing 
them out on the land where each family could 




MOTHER, HOME, AND- 
THE SIMPLE LIFE 



THE CARIBBEAN WORLD 213 

have its own house and where better conditions 
prevail. A colony of one thousand souls grouped 
about a central church and school and store would 
afford new hope and better living to these dwell- 
ers in the crowded tenements. 

What may be the future of the West Indian 
on the Isthmus is not yet clearly established, and 
the Canal Zone authorities have heretofore re- 
garded the "silver" men as more of a temporary 
necessity than permanent residents. As indus- 
trial conditions on the Zone become more stable, 
however, it appears that there always will be 
needed a large labor force with a minimum of 
about twenty thousand people ; and unless some 
new factor appears or is imported, the West In- 
dian is going to supply this labor demand for 
years to come. This being the case, the laborer is 
worthy of his hire and should be paid a fair wage 
for what he does. And the missionaries and social 
workers who are interested in the welfare of these 
people need a coordinated and unified program 
of religious and educational advance. So long as 
the present disjointed and unconnected methods 
are followed, scattering and sometimes inhar- 
monious results will appear. 

So long as there is work for a laborer in Pan- 
ama, so long the Caribbean man will be found 
here in such numbers as may be needed, and so 
long as he is here he at least deserves good treat- 
ment. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE PANAMA CANAL 

Probably most pilgrims to Panama think of 
the Canal as the outstanding feature of the 
American tropics, and in one way such it is. The 
traveler will probably want to see the Canal first, 
and he will find it well worthy of preferential po- 
sition. 

The story of construction days and engineer- 
ing problems has been ably told elsewhere and 
does not belong here. Every intelligent traveler 
will secure some good account of the work and 
read it as something that every man should know. 
It is the romance de luxe of engineering achieve- 
ment. The author of the Arabian Nights Tales 
would have dug the Canal by the sweep of a 
wand, or the rubbing of an old lamp, but the 
American method is vastly more interesting and 
is much more likely to remain in working order. 
Aladdin's engineering feats had a way of f aihng 
to stay put, if the wrong man got hold of the 
lamp, but the present Canal shows no signs of 
disappearing overnight. 

Before war conditions put a wall around 
everything, seeing the Canal was one of the pleas- 
antest and easiest of touring tasks. All was in 

214. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 215 

plain view, or could readily be found by asking, 
and most of the men on duty thought it a pleasure 
to answer questions. Of camera fiends and 
sketchers and notebook makers there were 
aplenty. But the war stopped all that for a time. 
Anybody could look at the Canal from almost 
any point along its survey, but the locks and 
docks were strictly private affairs. There are 
statistics in abundance to be had for the asking 
concerning the Big Ditch. Experts take pleas- 
ure in supplying us with entertainment by com- 
piling and translating figures into interesting 
statements. For instance, enough excavating 
was done on the Canal to dig a tunnel fourteen 
feet in diameter through the center of the earth, 
eight thousand miles of boring. It takes a little 
time to comprehend the meaning of a tunnel from 
Valparaiso, Chile, to Peking, China, or straight 
through from the north pole to the southern tip of 
the world. 

Enough concrete was used to build a wall four 
feet thick and twenty-five feet high clear 
around the State of Delaware. Probably by 
walking the two hundred and sixty-six miles rep- 
resented by this wall, one might understand the 
amount of concrete involved in the Canal con- 
struction. 

The enormous size of the locks can only be 
understood by walking their length through the 
underground tunnels and passageways in which 



216 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

is located the marvelous machinery of their opera- 
tion. To stand on the floor of a dry lock and look 
up at a lock gate eighty feet high, seven feet thick 
and sixty-five feet wide is an impressive expe- 
rience, but to see a pair of such gates swing open 
and shut at the touch of the finger is something 
to be remembered. The emergency dams look 
like a steel girder bridge, which, indeed, they are, 
and provide against accidents by as ingenious a 
piece of mechanism as the entire system affords. 
Enormous iron chains with hydraulic springs are 
stretched across the entrance to the locks to stop 
any reckless ship which might otherwise strike the 
gates. The Gatun Dam alone may be classed as 
one of the world's greatest achievements. 

The builders of the Canal may be pardoned for 
taking pride in the fact that the entire construc- 
tion cost, down to the present day — ^three years 
after the opening of the Canal — ^is still within the 
original estimate of $375,000,000, which figure 
included the $40,000,000 paid to the French for 
the work of the ear her construction. This means 
that the cost of the Canal was a Httle less than 
four dollars apiece for every inhabitant of the 
United States. The national prestige alone 
gained by the successful completion of the work 
has repaid this four-dollar investment many times 
over. Before the European war $400,000,000 
seemed hke a good deal of money. To-day we 
think of it as a very small sum. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



217 



It is easy to find numerous compilations of 
figures which astonish and perplex us, even 
though they do help us to understand the magni- 
tude of the work. And nothing is more disap- 
pointing than to try to understand the Canal by 
looking at it from any point along the bank. You 
can't see the Canal for the water ! It is no differ- 
ent from a great Western irrigating ditch and 




CONSTRUCTION DATS IN CULEBEA-GAILARD CUT 

looks like any quiet river. There are no marks 
of effort or strain anywhere, and when one looks 
about on the verdant and peaceful landscape he 
half beheves that the tales of the stirring times 
back in construction days must have been dreams. 
Culebra Cut looks like the Hudson palisades, 
and Gatun Lake is like any other beautiful in- 
land sea in a rolling country. The famous Gatun 
Dam is merely a dyke at the end of the lake and 



218 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

the marvelous spillway is only a picturesque 
waterfall in the middle of a dam. As for the 
locks, they are big concrete chambers looking 
very much like a paved street on top and reveal- 
ing nothing of the complicated mechanism below ; 
and the germ-proof towns are like any other spot- 
lessly clean villages with screened houses, and 
show nothing to cause us astonishment. 

Any superficial view of the Canal is disap- 
pointing. It is like trying to understand a deep 
mine by looking at the mouth of the shaft. The 
channel is full of water, the machinery is out of 
sight, the great achievements of sanitation have 
been largely removals of materials, microbes, and 
conditions that have left no trace behind to tell 
their tale. In one way it is a negative result. 

The idea of the Canal across the Isthmus is 
nearly as old as the discovery of the Isthmus by 
white men, but it remained for the intrepid 
builder of the Suez Canal to really undertake in 
earnest the project of a waterway between the 
two oceans. DeLesseps was both engineer and 
promoter and never really understood the size of 
his project. He had succeeded at Suez, but that 
was a farmer's ditch beside the Culebra Cut and 
the Gatun Dam, and the famous engineer was a 
very old man when he began on the Panama pro- 
ject. The high prestige of his name brought him 
money on a stock investment basis, and when 
unprincipled schemers got control of the com- 



THE PANAMA CANAL 219 

pany the crash and scandal were immense. De- 
Lesseps himself became insane as the result of the 
worry and disgrace and died in a hospital. 

The French attempt began on January 1, 
1880, with a great deal of oratory and cham- 
pagne, also the official blessing of the Bishop of 
Panama, which seems to have been something of 
a Jonah on the enterprise. 

In striking contrast was the beginning of the 
American work when a few men climbed out of 
a boat into water waist-deep and began cutting 
down jungle brush. 

The actual construction and excavation work 
begun on the Isthmus by the French was of a 
very high order, and much of it was used by the 
Americans. The two causes which defeated the 
French were reckless financing at home and trop- 
ical diseases on the Isthmus. So bad did the 
disease conditions become that in the fall months 
of 1884 fifty-five thousand people died, and in 
the single month of September, 1885, the total 
rate reached the high-water mark of one hundred 
and seventy-seven per thousand of population. 
The total of lives lost on the enterprise will never 
be known, but is far greater than that of many 
wars which have received a conspicuous notice on 
the historical page. The collapse of the De- 
Lesseps undertaking was followed by the organ- 
ization of the New Canal Company, upon which 
followed a chapter of bargainings and treaties 



220 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

and negotiations and bickerings with the object 
of selling out the rights and holdings of the com- 
pany to the highest bidder. In all of these the 
Panama Railroad figured very largely, and the 
Republic of Colombia kept a watchful eye on 
the main chance for herself. 

The story of President Roosevelt's large part 
in the American undertaking of the independence 
of Panama and the organization of the American 
effort is one of the romances of American history. 
On November 18, 1903, Washington recognized 
the new Republic of Panama, and later paid 
$10,000,000 for the Canal Zone and entered into 
a treaty guaranteeing the peace and perpetuity 
of the Isthmian Republic. Thus ended a half- 
century of riot and revolution and rebellion which 
was stated to have included fifty-three revolu- 
tions in fifty-seven years. Relations between the 
early ofiicials on the Canal Zone and the rulers of 
Panama were not ideal; some of the Americans 
seemed to have had a real genius for offending 
the finer sensibilities of the natives. 

The beginning of the American attempt is not 
a chapter of which anybody is very proud. The 
effort to dig the Canal from Washington under 
a mass of red tape which tied the hands of the men 
on the Isthmus proved an impossible undertak- 
ing. The President succeeded in effecting a reor- 
ganization which helped some, but not until all 
red tape was cut and Army engineers were put 



THE PANAMA CANAL 221 

in charge, was anything like real efficiency ob- 
tained. Three great engineers were connected 
with the work — Wallace, Stevens, and Goethals 
— and to each of these belongs credit for the very 
high order of work done. While the man who 
finished the job bears the outstanding name in 
connection with the Canal, without exception 
the engineers who worked under the first two men 
speak in the highest terms of the work that they 
accomplished. 

No snapshot resume of the building days, nor 
tourist instantaneous exposure of visits can re- 
veal, nor appreciate, the big problems that con- 
fronted the engineers. It all looks easy enough 
now, but it was very different then. 

Good health on the Canal Zone seems a very 
simple matter now, and such it is ; but when the 
doctors and sanitary engineers began work it was 
an exceedingly serious situation that they under- 
took to cure, and without their work there could 
be no Canal to-day. The complete elimination 
of the last case of yellow fever has made entirely 
harmless the mosquito carriers where they occa- 
sionally appear on the Isthmus. The best test of 
the work of the Sanitary Department is the fact 
that the Zone and terminal cities have remained 
clean and that there is no indication of relapse. 
Before work could begin, a whole system of trans- 
portation had to be organized, a steamer line put 
into operation, and an inmiense purchasing de- 



222 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

partment gotten into working order. Before 
men could be brought to the Isthmus to do the 
work some provision had to be made for housing 
and feeding, and the question of materials, sup- 
pHes, food, fuel, recreation, and education was no 
small matter. 

To dig the Canal required not only engineers 
and officials, but an army of common laborers, 
and the labor question was not easy. The Pan- 
amanian might have dug the Canal, but he did 
not do it ; he did not want to do it, and the prob- 
abihty is that he never could have done it. Em- 
ployers on the Zone refused to hire Panamanians 
for Canal work. 

Chinese cooHes might have been imported from 
Canton or Amoy, but Panama is a long way from 
southern China and still further from India, and 
no intelligent man ever seriously proposed im- 
porting Hindus. If enough Panamanian In- 
dians could have been found, they might have 
done the work, but the native Indian is a very un- 
certain and fragmentary factor of Hfe on the 
Isthmus. 

At this juncture the West Indian filled the 
breach and supphed the labor for the job. Up to 
forty-five thousand of them were employed at one 
time, and with the ebb and flow of the human 
tide between the Isthmus and the Caribbean 
Islands several times that number came to the 
Isthmus. Somebody else might have supplied 



THE PANAMA CANAL 223 

the labor, but the fact is West Indian did do 
the work, and at least deserves proper recognition 
therefor. 

The problems of suitable construction machin- 
ery were in a way simple. Given a definite task, 
it remained to devise mechanical means to meet 
the conditions. In practice, however, the case 
was not so simple as this sounds, and some very 
difficult knots were untangled before the work 
was well under way. Some of the old French 
machinery was used clear through the construc- 
tion period, but the jungle was sown with scrap 
iron of the old French equipment that has only 
recently been removed. 

The electrical and mechanical equipment for 
the operation of the locks is a marvel of adapta- 
tion and invention and nothing short of a tech- 
nical description can do the subject justice. To 
see the locks in operation is to wonder at the me- 
chanical contrivances which seem almost intelli- 
gent, and some of the design work is the result of 
real genius. 

Of engineering problems, proper, it is better 
to let the engineer speak with intelhgence, but 
any layman can stand on Gold Hill and by vigor- 
ous use of the imagination see something of the 
tremendous work that has been done since the 
first shovelful of earth was turned on that New 
Year's Day in 1880. Whether the French engi- 
neers anticipated landslides at Culebra is not 



224 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

clear, but the American engineers knew from the 
start that the porous soil would cave in more or 
less at that point. What it actually did do sur- 
passed the expectations of those who surveyed the 
work. When the banks began to cave north of 
Gold Hill the surrounding country got the idea 
and followed suit so fast that it looked as though 
the ten-mile strip would all be needed. 



r ( 1 ( I < ! rT~T 




GATUN SPILLWAY, KEY TO THE CANAL 

I spent a day in the big cut in January, 1917, 
and noted the rapid crumble of the historic bank 
at this troubled point. The following night the 
channel filled up for a length of eight hundred 
feet and shipping was suspended. Then the 
dredgers went at it hammer and tongs, and in 
three days and nights they had cleared a channel 
through that enormous mass of material and on 
the fourth day ships were again passing in safety. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 225 

It was a fine illustration of the way dirt was made 
to fly in the old days. 

Some otherwise intelligent people have utterly 
failed to comprehend the size of the task involved 
in the mere digging of the Canal. One high offi- 
cial advocated the cure of slides by digging back 
a mile on each side of the bank. Verily, he knew 
not what he said, and a member of Congress on 
visiting the Canal reported that he was still in 
favor of a sea-level route. Competent engineers 
assured him that to construct a sea-level canal 
from ocean to ocean would require at least fifty 
years of continuous labor. The wisdom of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt's ideas has been forever vindi- 
cated by experience. Some practical man has 
said that no man can know how great is the task 
of making the earth until he tries to move a little 
of it. The congressman needed a httle pick-and- 
shovel experience. 

Administrative problems are not especially 
acute on the Zone, but the completed task gives 
room for a world of appreciation of the general 
efficiency with which the whole work was carried 
out, and the smooth-running machinery of the ex- 
ecutive to-day attests the thoroughness with 
which the departmental system was organized 
and initiated by the men whose names will always 
be associated with the work. The task of operat- 
ing the Canal to-day would not be very great, 
nor would it require a very large army of em- 



226 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

ployees, but without any preconceived plan vari- 
ous related industries to the number of six or 
seven have grown up about the Canal administra- 
tion and operation, and the Canal Zone govern- 
ment to-day is doing a number of things never 
contemplated in the original plans. The rout- 
ing of ships is directly connected with the coal 
supply, and a great coaling plant stands at Cris- 
(tobal. A large cold storage plant makes possible 
the supplying of refrigerated goods to shipping 
countries. While the trans-shipping business at 
Colon is yet in its infancy, the docks there are 
already a very considerable factor in Canal activ- 
ities. Sanitation and public health, of course, 
require a trained force of specialists. The Canal 
employees must eat, and the commissary hotel 
and restaurant are a very important branch of 
the service. The quartermaster looks after the 
housing problem, and where there are ^ve thou- 
sand Americans, most of them living with fam- 
ilies, the educational problem necessitates a de- 
partment by itself. The Balboa Docks employ 
hundreds of men at high wages. 

In connection with the food problem come the 
large farming operations conducted on the Canal 
Zone. An army of laborers is employed, and the 
proceeds of the plantations and poultry yards is 
sold through the commissary's stores. 

From the beginning much attention has been 
paid to the social life and recreation needs of these 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



227 



exiles from home. A chain of govermnent club- 
houses runs across the Isthmus, one in each town, 
where reading rooms, games, gymnasiums, re- 
freshment counters, discussion clubs, concerts, 
dances, cigar stores, and motion-picture pro- 
grams are provided for young and old. During 
the dry season baseball is widely indulged in and 
plays an important part in the social and recrea- 
tional life of the Zone. 

Next to the "spotless town" 
features of the Zone the vis- 
itor is impressed by the smooth- 
running system through which 
everything is done. There may 
be officials who are grouchy and 
will not take time to aswer ques- 
tions, but I have never met one. 
The routine of operation and 
maintenance has succeeded the 
drive of construction days when 
Governor Goethals established 
the famous open house on Sun- 
day morning and received any- 



h^^ 



CBISTOBAL STREETS 



228 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

body who had anything to say to him. The last 
black laborer could see the governor if he wished, 
and many of them did so. The public-be-hanged 
attitude of occasional small executives in the 
States is delightfully absent. The machinery of 
administration outwardly works as smoothly as 
do the great gates of the locks. On the inner 
circle there are, of course, problems and some- 
times personalities, but they rarely escape from 
the closets where ghosts are supposed to remain. 




FAT CATTLE OF COCLE 



When the visitor begins to look about and 
beyond the Canal he becomes aware of the con- 
quered wilderness. Where once was dense and 
impassable jungle now sweep smooth and ver- 
dant hills. One-time fever swamps are now 
drained meadows, and the never-failing drip from 
the sanitary oil barrel induces a very high mortal- 
ity among the mosquitoes. Broad acres of rich 



TEEE PANAMA CANAL 229 

jungle lands have been cleared and are now model 
farms. Over the grassgrown hills wander thou- 
sands of fat cattle, increasing in number every 
year. The jungle of the Canal Zone is a very 
tame and conquered jungle. The real article lies 
beyond the line where there is plenty. 

It was once thought that the best thing to do 
with the jungle was to let it run wild after its 
kind, as a barrier to invasion. A little experi- 
menting proved that an army could cut its way 
through the jungle so fast that the brush was 
nothing more than a screen for the advance of the 
enemy. 

If the visitor stays long enough and gets close 
enough, he will learn of things which might have 
been done differently on a second trial, but regu- 
lation and adjustment have pretty well cleared 
up the points in question, and, taking it all 
through, the Canal is as satisfactory and com- 
plete a job as the world has ever seen. 

The Americans who live on the Zone are an in- 
teresting social experiment without knowing it. 
They form one of the unique communities of the 
world. Somebody has said that the Zone situa- 
tion is described by the word "suburban," but that 
does not express it. Every man lives in a govern- 
ment-furnished house, rent free. Free also is his 
electric light and a ration of fuel for cooking. 
Ice is so cheap that it is practically free. He 
buys everything that he eats and wears in the 



230 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

commissary's stores, where goods are sold to him 
at cost. So they are — at what they cost him. 
Prices now do not differ materially from retail 
figures in the States on the same goods. If 
housekeeping tires, there are the commissary 
restaurants, clean and wholesome, always avail- 
able for good meals at reasonable prices. Good 
schools are furnished free, of course, for the chil- 
dren. There is a free dispensary where all minor 
ailments are treated and medicine furnished free. 
The government hospitals are among the best in 
the world, and employees' rates are less than the 
cost of living at home. The Zone man is under 
Civil Service rules, receives a generous vacation, 
with a steamer rate to New York so low that it 
covers httle more than his meals en route. The 
scale of his wages is based on an increase of 
twenty per cent over the pay for the same class of 
service in the United States. Cheap household 
service abounds and is about as satisfactory as 
household service is anywhere. If he is lonesome, 
the government clubhouse, with its community 
hfe, good recreation, and well-stocked reading 
room, is always open to him practically without 
cost ; and if he gets tired of the Zone, there is al- 
ways Panama and the interior country with its 
never-f aihng places of interest and exploration. 

Here are all the advantages of the socialized 
state and no workingmen or clerks in all the 
world are so well paid, or taken care of, as these 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



231 



Americans on the Zone. It is a fine, efficient 
piece of provision for the men who do the work. 
Therefore the Zone dweller should be a satisfied 
and happy man, dreading nothing but the day 
when he must return to the States. 

In practice, however, the American on the 
Canal Zone is not so contented as the external 
features of his lot would lead one to suppose. 
There is an undercurrent of petty complaint, 
directed at everything in general, and indicative 
of a state of mind as much as of actual evils exist- 




ENCHANTED ISLANDS IN GATUN LAKE 



ent. These complaints are the results of too 
much community life without room for individual 
ownership or initiative. The followers of Bel- 
lamy should come to the Zone and stay long 
enough to get a few pointers. 

The trouble is that there is necessarily much 
of uniformity of housing, commissary, social, and 
living conditions. The American people are, 
after all, strong individualists, and every man 



232 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

likes to have something that is distinctively his 
own. 

When people work all day together, play ball 
together till meal time, all eat the same things at 
the same price from the same store, on exactly 
similar tables, with identical dishes ; when they go 
to the movies together and walk home down the 
same street together and sleep in houses and beds 
all ahke, they sometimes develop cases of nerves. 

On the testimony of one of the efficient medical 
men of the Zone a lot of nervousness disappeared 
when war work absorbed the attention and en- 
ergies of the patriotic Americans, who enthusi- 
astically devoted their spare time to various forms 
of win-the-war industry. 

The problem of raising children on the Zone is 
admittedly beset with difficulties. Health condi- 
tions are good enough, but many people are 
prone to regard life on the Zone as a general va- 
cation from the standards and disciphnes of the 
homeland, and children are often allowed to do 
very much as they please. Many families employ 
a servant, and there is no economic need for chil- 
dren doing any useful act of work. An unusual 
degree of irresponsibility results. "It will be 
time enough to correct them when we get back to 
the States," is a common remark. 

Of course there are many famihes where the 
highest ideals are earnestly maintained, and no 
more faithful fathers and mothers may be found 



THE PANAMA CANAL 233 

anywhere than here in this colony of voluntary 
exiles. But American life on the Canal Zone is 
at present apt to be regarded more as a vacation 
experience than as a serious attempt to face the 
whole problem of living. 

Moral and religious safeguards are not absent. 
The early plan of providing government-paid 
chaplains ended with construction days, and 
under the leadership of a group of farsighted 
laymen the Union Church of the Canal Zone was 
organized in February, 1914. All Protestant de- 
nominations except two now cooperate with this 
piece of ecclesiastical statesmanship. A central- 
ized organization maintains work in all the civil- 
ian "gold" towns along the Canal, employing 
four pastors, who must be ordained men of evan- 
gelical churches. This Union Church does not 
regard itself as a denomination but as a federa- 
tion for Christian service. No attempt is made to 
establish a doctrinal position, and members are 
not asked to sever their relations with their home 
churches. The excellent results attained under 
this management speak volumes for the wisdom 
of the plan and the earnestness and ability of the 
men who have fostered the enterprise from the 
start. The Union Church has devoted its benevo- 
lent moneys to opening a mission station at David 
in Western Panama, in cooperation with the 
Panama Mission of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 



234 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Morally, the Canal Zone is as clean as any 
place on earth. The improvement of moral con- 
ditions in Colon and Panama has done much to 
make the lives of Americans wholesome and to 
decrease the dangers to childhood that have ex- 
isted in the past. There will always be Amer- 
icans on the Canal Zone, and a few of them will 
exercise the great American prerogative of speak- 
ing their minds, but most of them will be better 
off here than at any other time in their lives. 



CHAPTER XV 
PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE 

Many prophets have taken in hand to tell us 
what the Panama Canal is to bring forth in its 
commercial, social, political, geographical, and 
educational results for the world. Probably no 
world-event has ever had so much advance adver- 
tising as this much written-up achievement. 
Great as is the Canal, it came near being out- 
shone in brilhancy by the publicity material sent 
out by journalists who found the subject to be 
profitable copy. 

In the main, the prophets were right. The 
world war postponed the arrival of some of the 
promised results, but it also enlarged the im- 
portance of the Canal and assured more extensive 
and far-reaching effects than could have been 
prophesied before the war began. It is now cer- 
tain that we are to have a new and more closely 
united America than was formerly possible, and 
that the drawing together of the two Americas 
has been greatly accelerated by the world vindica- 
tion of democracy. In this closer brotherhood 
of all Americans the Canal wiU play a large and 
important part. 

Just how far the stream of influences will flow 

235 



236 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

cannot be told, but it is within the moderate possi- 
bihties to say that every country in the world will 
be affected by the changes due to the new water- 
way. The French originators of the first project 
saw an opportunity for commercial investment 
and hoped to make good dividends from the ven- 
ture. They did not much concern themselves 
with by-products. The Americans who planned 
and pushed and persevered until the work was 
again begun were thinking of commercial and 
naval results, evident enough, but they could not 
have foreseen the far consequences to follow, nor 
could they have known that on the Canal Zone 
five or six related industries were to spring up 
under management of the Canal Commission. It 
is now about as difficult to predict the world-wide 
effects of the Canal factor as it would have been 
in 1903 to foresee the related industries of the 
present situation. 

Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvi- 
ous consideration. Everything else grows out of 
the elimination of distances by the Canal cut-off. 
It requu'es no prophetic gift to take the figures 
from any good map and ascertain that from New 
York to San Francisco via Magellan is 13,135 
miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262 — a saving 
of 7,873 miles, or a month of steady steaming. 
Between New York and Honolulu there is a sav- 
ing of 6,610 miles ; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles 
nearer New York via Panama than by the Suez 



INTO THE FUTURE 



237 



route. The list of distances saved may be indefi- 
nitely extended. 

If there were no results other than the saving 
of a week or a month of 
steamer time, the Canal 
would be cheap at several 
times its price. But these 
changes in steamer sched- 
ules and prices introduce 
an entirely new set of re- 
actions into the commer- 
cial and social world, and 
this is where the interest- 
ing problems arise. Left 
to herself 5 nature tends to 
establish a balance of flora 
or fauna in any locality. 
Introduce a new plant or 
animal or microbe and all 
sorts of readjustments 
begin at once, and before 
a new balance is estab- 
lished almost anything 
may happen. Commerce 
finds its level in much the 
same way and by the same law. Introduce a 
radical distm^bance, like the Panama short-cut, 
and everything begins to happen. Add the direct 
and indirect results of the war with its weaken- 
ing of German influence and strengthening of 




PANAMA PUBLIC WATER WOEKS, 
INTERIOR COUNTRY 



238 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

inter- American interests, and we may have prac- 
tically a new world before a new balance is estab- 
lished. 

Commercial interests naturally forge to the 
front in any discussion of canal results. So ably 
have these matters been discussed by experts that 
any repetition of figures and industries here 
would be beyond the scope of this work. 

It must be understood that the world war ren- 
dered obsolete our former ideas regarding trade 
between the United States and Spanish- America. 
Whether the extensive German political-com- 
mercial machine that covered all Latin- America 
can regain its prestige in fifty years to come re- 
mains to be seen, but it is certain that for a gen- 
eration following the defeat of Germany by the 
free nations of the world North America will 
have a magnificent opportunity to enter South 
American trade on very advantageous terms. 
And the great bulk of the west-coast trade will 
pass through the Canal on its way to Gulf and 
Atlantic ports, as well as to Europe. 

The completion of the Panama Canal may be 
set down as the date of the discovery of Latin- 
America by the people of the United States. 
Previous to that date the North Americans were 
aware enough of the Monroe Doctrine, but al- 
most unaware of the lives and interests of the 
nations hving south of the Rio Grande River. 
With the opening of the Canal the North Amer- 



INTO THE FUTURE 239 

icans began thinking south, and so far as the pro- 
cess has gone it has been very informing. Once 
the war is out of the way, the process will be 
greatly accelerated. With uninterrupted com- 
mercial conditions, five years of the expanded life 
due to the Canal will be about equal to sending 
the whole people back to school for a year. The 
cultural and geographical values of this new zone 
of thinking have hardly been felt as yet, but now 
that the attention of the world is released from 
the battlefields of Europe and the enormous so- 
cial and financial problems arising from the ex- 
pense of making the world decent once for all, the 
tide of interest is again turning southward along 
the shores of our own great oceans to the mighty 
events that await us there. 

Spanish-America has twelve republics and 
eight thousand miles of coast line on the Pacific 
ocean. The United States has a Pacific Coast of 
about fifteen hundred miles. The eight thou- 
sand miles marks the western boundaries of 
lands enormously rich in things that the world 
needs, but exceedingly poor in finished products 
or adequate growth. Probably no country on 
earth shows a wider margin to-day between pres- 
ent raw resources and possible high developments 
than these same twelve Spanish-speaking coun- 
tries. The only analogy that bears on the case is 
that of the rapid and extensive advancement of 
the Pacific States after the completion of the 



240 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

transcontinental railroads. There is reason to be- 
lieve that a similar record of progress awaits the 
west coast of South America. 

The combined foreign trade of the west-coast 
republics before the war reached the very respect- 
able total of nearly one billion of gold dollars in 
a single year. There are commercial prophets 
who believe that within ten years from the com- 
pletion of demobilization this volume of trade 
may be doubled. This means new markets, new 
industries, new development of mines, markets, 
manufactures, and agriculture, new colonization 
projects and a score of other unpredictable re- 
sults. No less an authority than Mr. John L. 
Barrett says, "I believe that the Panama Canal 
will initiate in all South American countries a 
genuine movement which will have a most im- 
portant bearing on the commerce and civilization 
of the world." 

An immense amount of iron lies buried in the 
mountains of the west coast. Not much has ever 
been done about it. But enormous quantities of 
ore have been destroyed by the processes of war, 
and South American iron may come to high 
values sooner than its owners have supposed. 

It is only recently that consideration has been 
given to the idea of establishing in connection 
with the Canal a great commercial trans-ship- 
ping point. Colon is yet a little town, mostly 
West Indian to-day, but already the Cristobal 



INTO THE FUTURE 241 

docks are piled high with South American pro- 
ducts awaiting reshipment. The proposed estab- 
lishment of a free port at Colon may yet result in 
a western Hongkong where the commerce of the 
seven seas comes together to be distributed to the 
^ve continents. Whatever might have been the 
results had there been no war, it is now sure that 
everything that happens in South America has 
henceforth a very definite significance for the 
United States. Whether we like it or not, we are 
out of our exclusive dooryard and will have to 
take our place on the great national street named 
Aiiierica and play the game with our neighbors. 

For decades past Central America has been an 
unknown land to the United States. We have 
contentedly supposed that the only crop was that 
of revolutions and the only resources a few 
jungle fruits. But at last we are discovering 
Central America, and some of us are astonished 
to there find vast areas, fertile soils, varied and 
valuable products, intelligent peoples, a volume 
of commerce and climate fit for Eden. We knew 
little and cared less about Guatemala, Salvador, 
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama ; 
and since the bulk of trade of these lands was with 
Europe, they paid little attention to us. Why 
should they do otherwise? 

The presence of the United States on the 
Isthmus of Panama introduces a new factor into 
the American tropics. It looks very small and 



242 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



insignificant, that little ten-mile strip with the in- 
fluence in Panamanian affairs, but how far the 
North American influence is going to reach out 
beyond the Zone limits cannot be known. Every- 
body is watching the results for revolution-proof, 

permanently peaceful 
Panama, and there are 
other countries not far 
away where there are 
people who are pray- 
ing for something like 
it, or just-as-good, for 
themselves. Doubtless 
their prayers will not 
be answered directly 
but the influence of 
this leaven may work 
out into a wide circle 
and instigate move- 
ments that we have 
not counted upon. 

But the largest 
factor in the new 
American situation grows out of the new world- 
emphasis on the Golden Bule. At last the world 
understands as never before how finally determin- 
ative is the moral and spiritual factor in all human 
progress. We may never know just how much 
the world had paid to clear away the rubbish of 
autocracy and found the new age on the principle 




A JUNGLE CATHEDRAL 



INTO THE FUTURE 243 

of a square deal for great and small ; but the deed 
is done, and henceforth the one compelling sanc- 
tion in all life must be the essential principle for 
which the Alhes have spent their treasure and 
spilled their blood. The new internationalism 
will underHe all further development of relations 
between the two Americas, which opens a new 
world of social discovery and growth as fascinat- 
ing as that which Columbus found in the physical 
surface of the globe. 

The greater results of the closer fellowship of 
North and South America will be registered in 
the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances 
and stock dividends there will be, but back of and 
beyond these will rise the new American spirit, 
uniting the finest courtesy and artistic tempera- 
ment of the Latin with the practical initiative and 
efficient vigor of the blend of blood in the United 
States. There is no gulf, great or small, fixed 
between the two races. Each has something that 
the other needs, and close fellowship will result in 
new race sympathy and mutual advantage. 

To ignore this basis of development is to forget 
that cold commercialism will in time chill the 
fervor of friendships and aUenate the growing 
sympathy of nations. If we are to have no inter- 
est in our neighbors other than the profits we may 
make from their trade, we will soon cease to be 
friends and become bitter rivals at the big game 
of getting all we can. 



244 PROWLUSTG ABOUT PANAMA 

It takes two to play the game of reciprocal 
commercial success. If we succeed on the great 
international chess board, it will be not by 
shrewd defeat of our friends but by the coming 
to maturity of a high sense of honor and fair play 
on both sides. It is not one of us against the 
other, but both of us together against the normal 
difficulties of growth and production. 

One of the native leaders of Latin- American 
life has explained that South America was un- 
fortunate in the character of the founders of her 
national institutions. Adventurers, explorers for 
gain, greedy conquistadores made the beginnings 
here, and the moral foundations were laid by re- 
ligious leaders who traveled with pirates and 
plunderers and officially blessed their every act 
of crime. And from the beginning until now the 
type of religion that has prevailed in Latin- 
America has not assisted in the building up of 
free institutions, nor has it produced a high 
morality among the people. 

The South American struggle for self-govern- 
ment and free ideals has been a long, bloody, and 
heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic 
forces brought over from mediaeval Europe. 
Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve high 
honor for their work in breaking the bondage that 
held all life helpless. One by one the colonies 
threw off their pohtical yokes and became repub- 
lics, every one of them, in theory, modeled after 



INTO THE FUTURE 245 

the United States. The passion of the South 
American patriot has been home-rule, but, un- 
fortunately, home-rule has not always meant self- 
government. That is quite a different matter. 
The overthrow of European despotisms was fol- 
lowed by innumerable internal revolutions. 
Panama had no monopoly on internal dissensions, 
and makes no claim that her fifty -three revolu- 
tions in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark 
of insurrections for South or Central America. 

In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic gov- 
ernment does not assure stable political institu- 
tions nor efficient administration of public affairs. 
Good government by popular sovereignty is 
something far more fundamental than a matter of 
printed constitutions or shouting "Viva indepen- 
dencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsi- 
bility and free consciences there can never be a 
successful democracy on earth. 

Free institutions and free consciences are win- 
ning out in South America, but it is in spite of the 
established church and not because of it. It is not 
politically a question of religion that we are dis- 
cussing; it is a matter of organized, crafty, and 
unscrupulous opposition to every movement that 
makes for the development of democracy in 
South America. And since the establishment of 
a better understanding and closer fellowship be- 
tween the two continents depends upon this very 
basis of free and morally responsible social and 



246 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

political leaders, the question is most vital. 
Everywhere there are a few intelhgent, earnest 
men working away patiently and steadily at the 
problem of making South America democratic by 
making her people free to adopt with intelligence 
democratic institutions. One by one the nations 
have declared for freedom of worship and con- 
science, and, last of all, Peru, robbed and de- 
spoiled Peru of the conquest, priest-ridden and 
fanatical Peru, threw off the galling yoke of spir- 
itual bondage and divorced church and state. It 
seems simple enough to read about it here, but at 
every step of the way the old church left untiu*ned 
no stone of bigotry and intrigue and prejudice 
that could oppose the coming of the modern age 
to Peru. 

The supreme tragedy of South American hfe 
has been that the hght that has been in her has 
been darkness. The spiritual leaders of the 
people have themselves opposed all progress 
toward the hght. Until a spiritual leadership 
arises that will at least support aggressive and 
progressive movements toward freedom and de- 
mocracy and moral uphft, slow progress will be 
made. And this matter concerns the whole 
American world. These are now our next-door 
neighbors, and their children will yet be playing 
in our yard. 

The surprising thing is that so much has al- 
ready been accomphshed with a millstone tied 



INTO THE FUTURE 247 

about the neck of all progressive movements. No 
finer tribute could be paid to the high ideals and 
large posibilities of South American character 
than a recital of the results accomplished by her 
intellectual and moral leaders in the face of 
enormous handicaps. 

The thinking minds of these southern repub- 
lics are almost without a rehgion to-day. Long 
since have they ceased to give even passive assent 
to the demands of the commercial hierarchy that 
claims spiritual monopoly over the souls of man. 
Technical outward conformity to the require- 
ments of the church may be a pohtical advantage 
or a domestic convenience, but as a principle of 
life and foundation for thought the intellectuals 
are frankly agnostic. Man after man, when once 
confidence is gained, will state that they do not 
beheve in the claims of the church, and usually 
have ceased to believe in anything at all — and 
these are the leaders of the intellectual life of the 
nations with which we are to deal. And what are 
they to do? No adequate substitute do they know, 
and until an open Eible and a living Christ take 
the place of the mummery and the crucifix we 
cannot denounce their course. Their intellectual 
nonconformity is to their credit. 

The final problem is that of developing people 
fit to live with, not mental and moral slaves under 
the dominance of superstition and intolerance. 
Back of the cry for wider and richer trade routes 



248 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



is the need of responsible men with whom we may 
transact business. More than shorter shipping 
line, we need better shippers, north and south. 
Underneath vast projects of material advance- 
ment lie all the social and 
industrial problems of 
labor and wages and ex- 
change and credits and 
fidelity to contracts and 
personal honor. And above 
all this is the need of hon- 
esty and efficiency and a 
personal faith in a living 
God who knows and cares 
and takes account of what 
we do, of what we are, and 
is not to be bought off by 
a check or an incantation. 

What the bigger Amer- 
ican world needs is bigger 
and better Americans, 
Latin and Saxon. If the 
influences released by the 
Panama Canal help to pro- 
duce these citizens of the 
larger horizon, one of the greatest services pos- 
sible will be rendered to humanity. But the larger 
horizon is conditioned upon a larger hope that 
flows from the mountain of the more abundant 
life. And the Americans of the northland need 




SHOE-BILLS ARE SMALL 



INTO THE FUTURE 249 

the broader basis and vision and character as 
much as their southern neighbors. 

What really has the Panama Canal to do with 
all this ? Much every way, but chiefly as a key for 
the unlocking of the long-closed doors and the 
releasing of long-latent forces of international re- 
lations in trade and in social and spiritual life. 
Should a great working example of educational 
and social and spiritual Hfe be established at 
Panama by some concerted action of united 
Protestantism, the influence of the principles 
there promulgated by progressive and devout 
men would extend over a very wide range of 
Latin hfe. The procession that now passes 
through Panama will be doubled and trebled in 
the coming decades, and what is planted here will 
spread everywhere. "I saw it so done in Pa- 
nama," may become the precedent for almost 
anything new, whether good or bad. 

The influence of such institutions in the City of 
Panama will be more far-reaching than if located 
on the Canal Zone. The Zone is wholly North 
American; Panama is thoroughly Latin. The 
institutions of the Zone are those of the United 
States and are looked on somewhat askance by 
Latin visitors. It is all very great and imposing, 
but it is so radically different in spirit and 
method, that points of close contact are hard to 
estabhsh. Panama is a different matter. What- 
ever is done there by Spanish-speaking people 



250 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

will be visited and viewed with sympathetic in- 
terest and appreciation. 

The heart of living faith that is to impress its 
throb on this blood stream of Latin life must not 
be an imported made-in-the- States institution, or 
it will be but an ineffectual flutter. Likewise it 
must be something more comprehensive than the 
traditional schedule of occasional gatherings of 
the faithful, important as these will be. To do 
this work there needs be an interpretation of the 
Christian message that will relate itself to a 
very wide circle of human life and interests. 
Through native leadership and examples must be 
spoken a message that will compel attention and 
challenge the minds as well as the hearts of men. 
A Hving interpretation of a spiritual passion, a 
social service program with a heart in it, an edu- 
cational work that will not only teach the cur- 
riculum but develop moral character, and intel- 
lectual propaganda of good literature, a physical 
gospel of health and exercise, a recreational hfe 
clean and wholesome, a personal moral standard 
of the New Testament grade — ^these are what are 
needed in Panama and, broadly speaking, every- 
where else in Latin- America. Once established 
here they will be felt over a wide reach of the 
southern world. 

There is a lot of cheap and easy optimism that 
maintains that all will yet be well in some in- 
definite way. Some hopeful tourists have visited 



INTO THE FUTURE 251 

Panama and taken the trip about South America, 
apparently seeing nothing but the rainbow of 
promise everywhere. And these happy pilgrims 
have written books, assuring us with a maximum 
of glittering generalities that right is everywhere 
driving out wrong and that all will soon be well. 
Other writers assume this attitude consciously, 
out of regard for the interests that pay their ex- 
penses on the trip. Some people write in glowing 
terms from motives of consideration for the feel- 
ings of their South American friends. Would 
that we might tell only the bright sight of the 
story ! It would be far more pleasant. 

But, after all, the facts are the irreducible 
minimum upon which to build all successful pro- 
grams of reconstruction. Only when we reach 
the inner and deeper springs of life and character 
can we hope to open fountains of living waters for 
the desert of the hirnian heart in bondage. 
Really to know Latin- America is to believe in 
its high and fine possibilities. What Latin- 
America needs is a fair chance. 

The end of the last great despotism of earth 
has left democracy a triumphant political prin- 
ciple in human government. Henceforth no na- 
tion may hope to keep step with the advauxje of 
mankind unless its political procedures are essen- 
tially democratic. And while South America 
has long had the form of democracy, it now be- 
comes essential that her republics develop the 



252 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

working reality of effective self-government. To 
do this two things are indispensable. The suc- 
cessful democracy must be intelligent and must 
find a moral foundation in the free consciences 
and minds of self-disciplined citizens. Spiritual 
despotisms and religious superstitions never did 
and never will eventuate in a capacity for democ- 
racy. Only men who are intelHgently free can 
exercise the functions of free governments. 

The only working basis of democracy, in short, 
is that system of religious ideals which has uni- 
formly supported popular education, cham- 
pioned the rights of the oppressed, advocated 
self-government, welcomed investigation, and 
maintained freedom of conscience as of higher 
value than iron-bound uniformity to prescribed 
standards. It requires but a cursory glance at 
the record of history to know that no working de- 
mocracy has ever survived the opposition of an 
ecclesiastical hierarchy that has remained the 
bitter foe of progress for a thousand years. 

There is more hope for Panama in the little 
Protestant chapel down by the Malecon and the 
efficient and modern school maintained there by 
the force of missionaries with their progressive 
ideals than in all the pageantry and glitter of a 
system of repression and despotism that the world 
is rapidly outgrowing. The religious Hun will 
take his place with the deposed political despot 
who proposed to destroy the hberties of man- 



INTO THE FUTURE 253 

kind. The most urgent need of the mission work 
in Panama just now is that of trained and efficient 
Latin leadership. No people can be effectively 
lifted from without. 

A century ago nearly the whole of the southern 
world was in the throes of political readjustment. 
Self-government and pohtical freedom were the 
watchwords and everywhere strong men arose 
and devoted their hves to the task of breaking 
from the necks of the people the political yokes 
under which they had staggered for two and one 
half centuries. 

To-day in Latin- America the second great 
struggle for freedom is under way. Bound 
minds and consciences, superstitions and moral 
despotisms — ^these are the stumbling-stones 
across the pathway of progress. All over Latin- 
America men are rising and enlisting their hearts 
and minds in the struggle for free consciences and 
independent judgment in the things of the Spirit. 
Nearly all these countries achieved political inde- 
pendence within a few years. When the climax 
came it was comparatively sudden, and it may be 
that the breaking of the chains of moral and spir- 
itual despotisms will hkewise be a shorter strug- 
gle than now seems possible. Once again the 
clock is striking, and who knows but the end of 
political despotism in all the earth may mark the 
rapid approach of spiritual democracy and high- 
est liberty in all America! 



254 PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 

Heroic has been the long struggle in Latin- 
America for self-government. Splendid is the 
fight being made to-day for larger liberty. If 
Pan-Americanism means anything at all, it 
means a social foundation in honor and intelli- 
gence and brotherhood. It is time to address our- 
selves to the great imfinished task begun by those 
intrepid pioneers. The Canal is finished and the 
task of construction is done, but the end of con- 
struction is the beginning of empire-building for 
the larger task yet incomplete. 



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N. MANCHESTER, 
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